MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to welcome you to our Human Resources Committee meeting on the subject of culture. Welcome to all of you. We have some people who are substituting here so we give a warm welcome to Jim DeWolfe, who is substituting for Ron Chisholm and Robert Chisholm, who is substituting for Maureen MacDonald. Welcome to the two of you. Speaking of Maureen MacDonald, she will be replacing Eileen O'Connell on the committee. I think all of you were at the funeral but perhaps it might be fitting, as she was a member of our committee, if we could pause, for just a moment, and either in your thoughts or in traditional prayer we could remember Eileen and her family.
[A moment of silence was observed.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We will certainly miss Eileen.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Mr. Chairman, I want to say, on behalf of our caucus, how much we appreciated receiving the card of sympathy and condolences. It was a very nice gesture and it was appreciated by all members of our caucus and staff.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We sent a card on behalf of the committee because Eileen contributed so much to this committee and worked hard at her role here.
I want to remind the subcommittee members that there is a subcommittee meeting immediately following this to deal with the subcommittee report.
We are delighted to have our guests from the Nova Scotia Cultural Network and from the Nova Scotia Arts Council: Mr. Andrew Terris, Mr. Keith MacPhail and Ms. Ninette Babineau. We are delighted to have you with us as we look at culture.
Just a few introductory words and will be echoing, really, what John Ralston Saul said at the lecture that I attended but I hope that we don't look at culture simply as one activity within the economic sphere but that we look at it in sort of a wider perspective. This is, of course, the essence of what John Ralston Saul was saying at his lecture. I tried to support him with a quote from Paul Tillich, that religion is the substance of culture and culture is the form of religion, and he misunderstood, I think, what I was saying and gave a reductionistic approach to religion when really I was trying to say that I was agreeing with him, that culture is the mirror in which we see ourselves and it is more than just an economic activity.
So with those introductory words, I welcome you. Our format is that we ask our witnesses to present and then we have time for questions and for issues of clarification. I am not sure who we have; Andrew, you and Keith are down first. It doesn't really matter. Are there any time constraints on any of your parts? Perhaps we will start then with Andrew and Keith and then we will move on to you, Ninette, if that is okay.
MR. ANDREW TERRIS: Good morning. I am Andrew Terris, the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Cultural Network. The Cultural Network is a relatively new organization. We have been around for three years. It is the first time that those who work within what we call the broad culture sector have really come together under the umbrella of one organization. Very briefly, when we talk about the cultural sector, we are talking about a very broad grouping that includes the arts, design, heritage, the cultural industries and the performing arts.
In these wonderful books that have been distributed, if you read these, you will know just about everything there is to know about culture in Nova Scotia. There is a very complete history and somewhere there is a plastic sleeve which is our brochure of the Cultural Network and a wonderful map that shows where cultural activity happens in Nova Scotia, and actually the Nova Scotia Culture Sector Strategy which is a document that a lot of us worked on for a couple of years which is meant to map out, in broad strokes, the future of cultural development in Nova Scotia.
The network is what we call an industry association or a sector council. It really is intended to be the voice of the "cultural industry" in Nova Scotia, much the same way as TIANS, which is about 18 years older than we are, is the voice of the tourism industry. Like the tourism industry, we see a very substantial potential for growth and development. We think that culture is now and will be one of the major economic generators for this province and I may go into that a little bit.
I agree totally with the chairman that culture is about much more than economics and economic development but we find that when we are talking to people who really don't have a handle on the cultural producers, that talking about economics and jobs is actually an eye-opener because for a lot of people, culture and economic development - culture is here and
economic development is here and culture is about ideas and entertainment, it has nothing to do with economic development. Well, I am going to give you some statistics, I think, that will suitably impress you that the two are not opposites at all.
This is really the message, I think, that we are trying to get across in a very general way, that culture has many aspects, that it is a very important part of the life of Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians and that beyond culture, as the essence of who we are and how we view ourselves in the stories we tell about ourselves, it goes far beyond that as an important part of the economy and as I will demonstrate to you very shortly, probably one of the most important generators of jobs currently in Nova Scotia.
We were a bit confused about the nature of this committee and we went to look at your mandate. When we talk about human resources, we think of Human Resources Development Canada and the Cultural Human Resources Council, people who are looking at job creation very broadly in Canada. So, we, at first, assumed that this committee was about job creation in Nova Scotia. Well, I am not so sure. It seems to me it is more in the nature of appointments to various committees and agencies that the government has set up. Am I correct in that? Is that the primary task or do you look more broadly?
MR. CHAIRMAN: It has become the primary task. That wasn't always the task. That was added in 1993 and the ongoing task of the committee is to look at issues in areas of education, culture, labour. Sometimes we have looked, with the permission of the minister, in justice. It is a rather broad mandate that we have so it is not simply job creation. I know human resources does sort of imply that but at the request of one of the members of the committee, and with the agreement of the whole committee, we want to look at the whole cultural sector and be a support to it if we can.
MR. TERRIS: Okay, we will take the broad approach. I was hoping you would say that.
In terms of human resources, that is a part of our mandate to look at education, training and professional development for the cultural sector because, of course, you need a skilled labour force in order for the sector to grow and prosper. In fact, over the years a lot of the infrastructure for cultural development has been built in this province. We do have things like the College of Art and Design; we do have theatre and music programs at post-secondary institutions. In addition to that we have things like the Nova Scotia Arts Council, which a number of us really put in a lot of time, over 15 years, to get that up and running, because that is an extremely important part of the way that artists develop their creative skills, it is a way of channelling public investment into the development of creative skills by the primary creators in this sector.
Those are the people who really drive culture, not so much in terms of popular culture, grassroots culture, but in terms of the culture sector, the people who work in culture. If you don't have the individual creator driving the whole cycle, then you have nothing. Ultimately it comes down to ideas in somebody's head, and you have to invest in those creative ideas.
The culture sector strategy, one of the things that we came up with, and we put it right on the cover because we felt it was so important, is what we call the creative cycle. This is the cycle of how things work in culture. You have what we call creation, production, distribution, consumption and conservation. It all starts with creation, and without investment in primary creators, primarily through the Nova Scotia Arts Council, that is what drives this cycle.
Apart from that, there has to be investment in skills development and professional development. These are the kinds of things we look after at the Cultural Network. We are not alone, the Arts Council invests in those sorts of things as well, as do other entities. One of the things we do is run an internship program, funded by HRDC. We place young interns in cultural businesses and organizations. Essentially HRDC doesn't like the t-word, training, but it is essentially a subsidized training program. It allows interns to go in, learn skills on the job. Interestingly enough one of the things that has been found in the research on the cultural labour force is that when you ask people who work in culture where they learned the skills that they use in their day-to-day activities, they did not learn them so much in their education, in post-secondary training, they learned them on the job, because the skills are that specific.
Internships are a very important way for people who have general skills to learn specific skills that will allow them to go on. What we have found is that our interns, generally at the end of their terms, have gone on to full-time employment or equivalent employment with another employer, but that the training has been key to their making that entry into working in the culture sector.
We run workshops to help people upgrade their skills. Currently we are running intellectual property workshops - that is a big buzz these days, intellectual property. We are helping the culture sector learn about what intellectual property is and how you deal with things like patents, copyright, trademarks, et cetera. We are working with somebody from the Canadian Intellectual Property office who is delivering those workshops all across the province, I might add. We are also talking with the Nova Scotia Community College about working on a research project to look at future training needs in the culture sector.
I just want to make a couple of quick points. You are all familiar with the buzz about the knowledge economy and how it is the way the economy is going. What we find is that when people talk about the knowledge economy, they talk about information technology, they talk about bio-technology, and for some reason culture gets left off the list. If there is a knowledge-based industry it is culture because it all comes out of the human brain. Without
that creativity, without the human mind driving this, you would not have culture, you would not have a cultural industry.
If you doubt the economic power of that or the potential of that, the entertainment industry - they call it the entertainment industry in the United States, we call it the cultural industries - I believe, in terms of American exports, it is the second-largest export of the United States of America. Entertainment programming; it is films, it is television programming, it is magazines, it is recordings, it is the second-largest export. It is huge, and it is one of the reasons, if you have been reading The Globe and Mail this week about Planet America, it is one of the reasons that Americans are dominant in the world. It is not just their economic power, it is their cultural power.
The big money is in the cultural industries, it is in film, it is in broadcasting, it is in the music industry, it is in publishing, but you can't have vital cultural industries without creators. You have to support the arts in order to have vital cultural industries. I would also argue that we need enlightened government policy to support those cultural industries. I will give you one specific example, Nova Scotia is currently lagging behind a number of other provinces in the kind of support that it gives to cultural industries. I will give you one very specific example, in an extremely important area, and I actually find this quite scary.
You all know we have a film tax credit in this province and it has been instrumental in building the film industry here. In the Liberal budget that was defeated, I think there was a 4 per cent or 5 per cent - and I am not being partisan here, I am just trying to address the issues - tax credit for new media. That budget went down to defeat, and when the next budget came in with the new government, there was no tax credit for new media. New media are the future. We are not going to go to video rental stores in another few years, that is going to be downloaded through the Internet into your computers.
If Nova Scotia is not on top of what is happening with new media, we are going to get left in the dust. In Quebec they have huge subsidies for new media, tax credits. In Ontario, the same thing. They are doing it for publishing. I was talking to a publisher here the other day and he was saying that it is getting close to the point where he has to think seriously about moving to Ontario because he can't compete with the Ontario publishers.
Here is an area that has huge economic potential, where we have the skilled labour force, where we have the infrastructures to support it, but we are not getting the enlightened government policy to help those industries to grow, to be competitive, within that industry in other provinces. We are really missing the boat here. I can't say that strongly enough.
The final thing - I apologize, this is hot off the press - I would like to give you, if I may, the latest cultural labour force data. While this is being distributed - there was a prototype report that came out in 1997, the Health and Vitality of the Culture Sector in Nova Scotia, by Statistics Canada. They looked at labour force statistics. Well, we have been
working with them to get an update. Here is the incredibly good news, if you look at the employment in the cultural sector in Nova Scotia, in the period from 1990 to 1999, you see an increase of 46.7 per cent. That is the second-largest increase of any province in Canada, only beaten by B.C. at 52.6 per cent, which I think is a reflection of the growth of their film industry.
Overall Canada is at 25.9 per cent, so we are running almost double the rate of the rest of Canada. In terms of total employment in Nova Scotia, 46.7 per cent for the cultural sector, 5.7 per cent for the overall labour force in Nova Scotia. In addition, in terms of the relative size of the culture sector, in 1990 the culture sector accounted for 2.4 per cent of all jobs; in 1999 it was 3.3 per cent, that is a 37 per cent increase. Jobs are us. The evidence is quite clear.
There is disagreement in terms of the absolute numbers. There are different ways of calculating labour force statistics. You can do it through the census, you can do it through labour force sampling. The absolute numbers don't necessarily agree between the different surveying techniques. What they all agree on is the rapid rate of growth, there is no doubt about that whatsoever. I think on that very positive note, I will close and pass it over to Ninette.
MS. NINETTE BABINEAU: My invitation to be a part of this meeting today actually did come through Cultural Affairs, which I think speaks to the kind of relationship we have with the other organizations that are concerned with culture in Nova Scotia. When I received your book yesterday which I appreciated very much - thank you for sending this to us as well - I was a little puzzled by the legislation, the Cultural Foundation Act, that was included in it.
As you know, the Nova Scotia Arts Council was formed by an Act of legislation in 1996, which somewhat replaced, I believe, parts of this. I am sure this is still on the books and still governs a certain aspect but there is also the Act of legislation which formed the Arts Council. For your information, I have distributed a folder and the Act that formed the council is in your folder.
The Arts Council is an arm's-length Crown agency with responsibility for the funding of professional artists and arts organizations in Nova Scotia. In determining the distribution of funding, the Arts Council facilitates a peer assessment process, and that uses expertise from within the arts community to make wise investments of the public funds that are allotted to the council for the benefit of the cultural sector.
We like to say we don't fund individual artists and organizations, we fund creative ideas and projects. This peer review process is used exclusively to make all of the funding decisions by the council. There are successful applicants throughout the province in all disciplines from the many diverse communities that make up Nova Scotia.
As peer assessors we have now had well over 150 artists from Nova Scotia and a few advisors from outside of the province, who have been part of the process. These assessors not only review the applications that are made, they also look at the needs of the organizations and as in any funding competition - for lack of a better word - there are those who are successful, there are those who would be successful if there was additional funding and there are those who would not be successful. This is very carefully enumerated by the assessors with some advisory comments that are passed on to the applicants so that the peer assessment process becomes also a form of mentorship, an advisory role to the organizations and the individual artists who apply.
The full council board numbers 15, with a staff of 6 and as I believe you know, Russell Kelley, our former Executive Director, has accepted a position with the Department of Tourism and Culture. As the former chair, I am presently acting as the interim director and we are in the final stages of a search for a new executive director and actually are negotiating the terms of a contract with someone now. We hope to be able to make a public announcement by the end of this week or certainly by early next week, all things going as planned.
I think as you are also aware, our governing board is nominated by a nominating committee of six, made up of two members of council; two joint recommendations by council and the minister; and two recommendations by the minister. As of April 1st we are currently down to seven members and understand that the nominating committee appointment is in progress and we are waiting to hear further from that. Obviously, that is causing us a little bit of concern at the moment but we understand things are under way.
The budget presently stands at $1.5 million and approximately $1.25 million represents our allotment from the government. This is down by 15 per cent from our previous allotment. It has caused council to discontinue some of its programs and adjust others. We are thinking very positively about the future.
The remainder of our budget is realized from partnership endeavours, particularly two that we have had; one with the J.W. McConnell Foundation of Montreal, which supports our Arts inFusion program, is an education program. The first phase of that is now in its third and final year. We were invited by the McConnell Foundation to present a proposal. Our proposal was to the effect that we would conduct a three year research program - and I am using research in its broadest terms - to ascertain the effect of learning through the arts.
[9:30 a.m.]
We have been working with seven schools following the same group of children for three years in each of these schools. They were able to select from a pool of approximately 40 artists, I believe, from all over the province. It gave them access to some of the finest artists in this province. I could go on for about an hour about this, it has been a wonderful project. We have had assurance from the McConnell Foundation that they will continue the program. Right now we are looking at an interim program for the remainder of this year that is just projects and they are 8 to 14 day projects with the schools. The whole point of the program is learning through the arts, it is using the arts as a medium for learning other subject areas. This is a universal concern in education, it is re-looking at the role of the arts in education.
I was privileged to present a paper at an international conference this summer on the partnerships in arts education that we are enjoying here in Canada. This is a subject that is of international interest.
We are looking at a continuation from the McConnell Foundation for another three years, subject to acceptance of our next proposal. We also have a partnership with MTT, they support our new media awards, and actually there is a draft in your folder as well - it is very clearly marked "DRAFT" - and this is an announcement that is going to be made this Saturday at the Baddeck New Media Festival. We will be presenting an annual $10,000 new media award at the Baddeck festival in recognition of new media artists in Nova Scotia. Again, these decisions are made through a peer assessment process.
The other major prize that we offer is the Portia White Prize that I am sure most of you are aware of. I also have the information on that in your folder, actually - let's go back to the folder - I am jumping around here a bit. I have included the annual report, a newsletter, and two of our brochures just for you to have some general information about the council. The Portia White Prize is in recognition of excellence and is awarded to a person who is nominated by members of the arts community, cultural community in Nova Scotia and it is in recognition of outstanding contribution to the cultural life. Recipients thus far have been: Georg Tintner, George Elliott Clarke, and last year was Garry Kennedy.
We also are responsible for the management of the endowment fund, the Nova Scotia Cultural Endowment Fund. We are presently at about $860,000; an infusion from MTT is expected actually today, as an additional $80,000 to the fund, which brings us fairly close to our initial target goal of $1 million. The council determined that they would not spend any of the surplus money from the endowment fund that is realized through investment, until we had reached that target goal of $1 million. That will be a matter of discussion with council over the next months as to where we go from here. Minimally, the new media awards will be coming from that endowment fund.
The council also is involved in mentoring assistance. We have had several workshops - the staff travels continually around the province - on organizational effectiveness, financial presentation, grant preparation. We are also looking right now to possibly having a seminar in organizational effectiveness that would include not only our clients but other clients who are funded by the province.
We do fund all of the professional arts organizations with the exception of what are commonly known as the Big 4 - Neptune, Symphony Nova Scotia, Mermaid Theatre and the Atlantic Theatre Festival. The recommendation of the steering committee originally was that they would eventually come under the responsibility of the Nova Scotia Arts Council but this is still not the situation.
We just finished three years of operation and I am kind of switching back and forth between having been chair and now being in the executive director role, so I am trying to speak from the two positions. Part of our goal, in addition to all the project programs and the mentorship kind of programs that we have and the Arts inFusion, which incidentally is also partnered with Cultural Affairs and the Department of Education, has been to work to establish relationships with all of the other agencies in Nova Scotia, and actually nationally, that have to do with the cultural life of the province and we have been active on boards, on committees. Both council members and staff have been very active in that area. With the new person coming in, we hope to see that, and certainly expect to see that continue.
We have looked at our communication tools and have been developing those and we are looking at developing a further communication strategy. We have a website. You have seen the several brochures we have. The newsletter comes out twice annually. We do prepare an annual report that is distributed widely. We try not to duplicate what other parts of the cultural sector are involved with. For instance, our good friends in the Cultural Network are very active in advocacy and in other areas in gathering information data. We don't look to duplicate that, we look to work together with these agencies.
Our position among the Arts Councils in Canada, two years ago, we were the last Arts Council to be formed in Canada, incidentally, very shortly after B.C. was formed, but we were the last. In the short time that we have been in existence, we feel, and we have had that reinforced, that we hold a very prominent position among the Arts Councils in Canada and with the Canada Arts Council. Annually, the Arts Councils do meet. They have formed a network. We are looking at a regional symposium of the Atlantic Provinces Arts Councils in February and we have been invited to participate in an international symposium in December in Ottawa that is being organized by the Canada Arts Council.
We have looked to establish a relationship with the Arts Councils across the country. We did host that meeting two years ago and it was the first time that every province and territory, including Nunavut, which was a whole month old at that time, sent representation. We were, again, involved in the meeting last year and that was, again, an across-the-border
meeting with Arts Councils. The Arts Council, to this point, has found itself in, I think, a very strong strategic position in the country.
I am going to be leaving the Arts Council with the new person's arrival. It has been a privilege and it has been a pleasure to be part of the founding council and to have played the roles that I have. I have felt it has been a very privileged position. The Arts Council is, for the lack of a better word, a tool for the government to ensure that government funds and culture are invested in an open and transparent manner. Thank you. I will answer any questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Did you want to add anything, Keith, at this stage, before we go into questions?
MR. KEITH MACPHAIL: I will answer questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for your presentations and for all the work you have done individually in this very important part of Nova Scotia life. We are fairly informal at this stage. We will just go around the table with questions and maybe we will start with Don and come around the horseshoe.
MR. DONALD DOWNE: Mr. Chairman, and to you all, it is great to have you here and I appreciate the presentation. As critic, I have had the pleasure of hearing some of these presentations before and I guess one of the impressive parts of this is how the arts and cultural communities are trying very hard to work together in a cooperative way. I think that is a great message to get out because it does cover such a large waterfront, as it were, of backgrounds, from art to music to dance, and the list goes on and on. The fact that we are collectively trying to work together is impressive to me, realizing that there is a win-win here for everybody if we do work together and I want to compliment especially your comments with regard to that.
One of the issues about bringing you here today was to bring out the awareness of the social, the economic, the historical, the cultural history that we have and the asset that we have here within the arts and cultural community. The media are here and one of the joys of having them here, as well as politicians, is to make sure that we all understand the tremendous dimension that you play within the overall economic and social benefit of the Province of Nova Scotia. Sometimes it doesn't get the profile and the understanding of that background that it really requires. I know the few years that I had the pleasure of being a minister, one of the issues that you do is you learn consistently every day the new emerging industries and the potentials of each current industry that we have.
I was taken by your comments on the funding with regard to the film investment tax credits and such. At a time when the film industry was just a very small industry, there were legislative changes that we brought in that helped some of the arts community grow because
it gave them some protection but also in the tax credit provisions, we really saw an industry go from a few million dollars to $130 million last year, which is an impressive growth. It is somewhat questionable where it is going this year, but the trend is there.
The multimedia was a bit disappointed in missing that. I am not saying that as a derogatory term, but this is an emerging industry. Quebec saw that emerging industry years ago; they have about 85 per cent or 90 per cent of the market share in that area, which is a new frontier. I remember meeting with some of the people involved in that process at some of the functions here in Halifax, and those jobs are gone. Those economic opportunities are going away and they are leaving and it is sad to see that. If nothing else comes out of this meeting, I hope we all realize that here is an opportunity to continually grow the economy and create an economic benefit within a new, emerging industry that has a great potential of staying power and wealth generation.
I know my colleagues here are not necessarily on the front benches and they don't necessarily make the budget themselves, but they have a tremendous impact in their caucus in making sure that some of those initiatives that we talked about here today are seriously looked at. I would hope that, if nothing else, maybe something could come out of here, Mr. Chairman, with regard to some recommendations on the great potential that is within that sphere. We embellished those ideas and saw them as having great potential.
Another area where we think there is great potential is in the music industry. I remember we brought in some legislation on how we could be the music capital of Canada. Dreams begin somewhere, right? You have to have a dream, or a vision, or a concept of how to make things happen. That legislation didn't pass, but hopefully we can find some legislation collectively that can take a look at the music industry, which is a $100 million industry or beyond, and see that particular sector grow as well.
When we look at the whole arts and cultural community, I want to compliment the strategy that did come forward. It talked about how we need to take a look at individual sectors to see what will work, what will win, and what will benefit that particular group. I think as a province that is struggling, trying to determine a real economic strategy for Nova Scotia, as we kind of float along with the work that has been done in the past, we can't just sit on that crested wave forever. At some point that wave will crash and you have to make sure you have new growing industries. Maybe that is one area they can take a very serious look at and continue to have these impressive numbers of 46.7 per cent growth, which is absolutely phenomenal.
These are natural resources and they are very important to us but our human resource and the cultural benefit that can be derived from that is not - the Minister of Finance kind of threw cold water on reports about the arts and cultural industry - something to throw cold water on, it is something we should be embellishing, supporting, and growing. It is an
economic driver, if you just want to put it in that raw sense, without taking a look at all the social benefits that are driven from that particular perspective.
I want to say that today, maybe we can continue to keep in front of everybody's view, the tremendously important aspect of all the roles you have played and will continue to play as long as we, as government and as politicians, open the door and create that environment to foster further development and growth. That is what we need to do, is have a commitment by government that this particular side of the community is a very important part of our community and not one to just slowly let it do its little thing. To me it is one that we need to grab hold of and run with and support.
Lastly, I want to just compliment you on your leadership over the years. I know you have given a lot of time and energy in the Arts Council to kind of moving the process along. I think the one part of that that we, in the previous government, really wanted to develop was an arm's-length approach that was transparent, open, and not manipulated by politicians, but rather an industry-driven approach to developing a strategy and a future for that particular sector or the sectors that are involved. I think that is key, that whoever is in power shouldn't be playing puppet on a string with that particular side of the community. It should be allowing the community to be there in a supportive role. I just want to thank you for your leadership in moving that process along.
MS. BABINEAU: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We do have to be aware of limited time and basically, we are wanting to hear from our witnesses so if you could be aware of that, we would appreciate it.
MR. DOWNE: I didn't want to ask too many embarrassing questions about how little you guys are doing with regard to the industry, but I will certainly have another chance to do that later.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaudet.
MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to congratulate the presenters this morning. As a member of this committee, I certainly get a good feeling that the culture sector is alive and well and growing in Nova Scotia.
Ninette, my first question is in regard to provincial funding. You mentioned that you are receiving $1.25 million and my question is are we getting any help from the federal side, from the Canada Arts Council?
MS. BABINEAU: The Canada Arts Council is a national funding agency which in turn is funded by the federal government. As far as direct funding to arts councils, that is not part of their mandate. What has happened is since we have begun our peer review process and our mentoring process, we have seen a growth - and I don't have the figure in front of me - if I recall, somewhere in the vicinity of a 30 per cent increase in funding that is coming to artists and arts organizations in Nova Scotia through the Canada Arts Council. The relationship is one of two of a provincial peer assessment public funding body to a national peer assessment public funding body.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Andrew wanted to respond to that, I think.
MR. TERRIS: I think in the broader sense of looking at federal funding more broadly, specifically the Canada Arts Council, those of us who fought for the Nova Scotia Arts Council felt Nova Scotians were not doing well in applying to the Canada Arts Council for grants. One of the reasons was we didn't have an arts council here so people were at a disadvantage, they didn't know the process for applying for grants because they had no experience with it. Nova Scotians were not up to the same level as their peers in other provinces who were used to that. One of our arguments in arguing for the Nova Scotia Arts Council was that it would give Nova Scotian artists a leg up and a greater advantage in applying for Canada Arts Council grants. In fact, that has absolutely proven to be the case because of the increased success rate.
More broadly, it has been our feeling in the cultural sector that Nova Scotia has not been terribly good at accessing the full range available from the federal government, in terms of money for culture. That has improved somewhat and I have to brag a little bit about the Cultural Network which is not funded provincially, we are funded through Human Resources Development Canada. In the three years of our existence, we have succeeded in bringing probably close to at least $0.5 million of federal money into this province which would not have come if we didn't exist. Let's face it, it is the feds who have the big bucks now, let's figure out how to access that. I think there are ways of working collegially in order to do that.
MR. GAUDET: I guess my next question would be in looking at what lies ahead and if you have had the chance to suggest, make recommendations in terms of what the provincial government could do to help the cultural sector grow or keep on growing. With the statistics you have provided us this morning, it certainly shows there are lots of good things happening. I guess my question would be if you had a chance to just air out some frustrations or recommend how we could keep on expanding this industry at home, what would you say?
MR. TERRIS: I guess I have two areas of concern. The first is with regard to the arm's-length principle. One of the reasons the community fought so long and hard for the Nova Scotia Arts Council is that it really is about empowering the community to develop itself because the Arts Council is set up on a model of peer review. Prior to the Arts Council there was a very small group of civil servants within Cultural Affairs who were making all of
the decisions about who lived and who died in the cultural field, who got the money and who didn't. With the Nova Scotia Arts Council and the peer review system, it is actually people working in the field who are making the decisions about who gets the money to develop creatively and it is based on merit. It is not based on politics, it is not based on who you know, it is based on the quality of your creative work, which is how it should be.
Again, I am not partisan about any of this, to me it is about the issues, but the Nova Scotia Arts Council took what was probably the biggest cut of any area of culture in the last budget, 15 per cent, and then we see that there is a program put in place to assist rural development and the decisions are again being made by civil servants. I totally agree that we have to do something to support cultural development outside of metro. Economically, metro is doing very well, thank you very much, and I personally believe that the culture sector has tremendous potential for economic development outside of metro. If you look at the map that is in your kit and you look at where cultural activity is happening, there is an awful lot that goes on outside of metro, and in fact a lot of artists choose to live outside of urban centres, a lot of very good, creative people.
I do question taking money from the arm's-length Arts Council and putting it back into the hands of the bureaucracy, because it then becomes subject to political and bureaucratic manipulation, turf-building, et cetera. We fought for years and years to keep the process open, transparent and through a system of peer review. The goal is admirable, the process is not; it is a step backward. Number one.
Number two. From my point of view, if there is one really key issue, it is about support for the cultural industries, which I addressed somewhat in the area of tax credits. The film community has done really well, there are programs in place, there is the Film Development Corporation, the music industry, the publishing industry and the new media industry, which is absolutely critical, but there is no - how do I say it? - intelligent system in place for supporting those other aspects of the cultural industry. We are going to be at a real disadvantage in terms of developing that industry if we don't have some sort of coherent approach. I have been saying for several years, there are models in other provinces.
There is in Quebec, which is a very good model, a thing called SODEC. I forget what it stands for, but it is basically like our Film Development Corporation, only it is for all of the cultural industries. Any kind of commercial venture that you have in the area of the cultural industries, you can go to SODEC. I don't know whether they do equity financing or grants or guaranteed loans, I am not sure exactly what the process is - it is something that I have been meaning to research and haven't had the time - but at least they are looking at the whole cultural industry. They have substantial tax credits for new media, probably the highest in Canada.
Nova Scotia is not a wealthy province, we can't throw money at these things, but we can use our intelligence. There are ways, without spending a lot of money, to encourage these
industries to grow. If we miss this opportunity, it is an opportunity that is going to be lost forever. The new media is not about technology, the technology is a distribution system that gives you access to the world market. It is the creative content that is the key, that is what is going to make it successful. Everybody has access to the technology, it is the ideas that are going to put you ahead of the rest of the crowd. That is what we have here.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just to facilitate a discussion, if it is okay with you, Robert, Tim wanted to pick up on this issue that we are discussing. Is that okay?
MR. TIMOTHY OLIVE: Thank you, Robert. I just want to get a clarification on Mr. Gaudet's question. Ms. Babineau, when asked about Canada Arts Council funding, if I heard correctly, you said that there was no direct Canada Arts Council funding to the Nova Scotia Arts Council, and yet there was a 30 per cent increase in payments directly to artists.
MS. BABINEAU: From the Canada Arts Council. Perhaps I should have qualified further, it is the success rate of Nova Scotia artists applying to the Canada Arts Council for funding. Many of the professional arts organizations and individual artists in Nova Scotia apply for funding to several agencies. The Nova Scotia Arts Council is the provincial agency, obviously; the Canada Arts Council is the national, federal agency. Before the formation of the Arts Council, as Andrew has pointed out, the success rate was fair, not what the cultural community felt it should have been in terms of the artistic excellence that is in this province.
With the assistance of the Nova Scotia Arts Council in mentoring and helping the artists improve their grant applications, not only for the Arts Council but for any other agency that the artist would apply to, we have seen a success rate in the Canada Arts Council funding to the artists of Nova Scotia, not coming through the Arts Council but directly to the artist from the Canada Arts Council. We have seen a rapid rise in the success rate of our artists who apply to the Canada Arts Council. Does that clarify it for you?
MR. OLIVE: I guess the question I have is that Nova Scotia was one of the last provinces to develop and legislate a Nova Scotia Arts Council, and according to your literature it is who can apply, professional arts organizations which produce and represent work in all disciplines or make it possible for professional artists to produce and present work. So you are the spokespersons for this range of people who are looking for monies.
[10:00 a.m.]
MS. BABINEAU: No, we are not the spokespersons. We facilitate a process by which the professional artists can receive public funds in Nova Scotia.
MR. OLIVE: So when we talk about in the old days, as Andrew mentioned, there was politics involved about who got what and when.
MS. BABINEAU: The decision was made by a very small group of people who were employed by the government.
MR. OLIVE: That is fine, and probably not a fair distribution at that point in time of deserving applicants. Maybe one could make that assumption or one could not. I guess what I am wondering is, with the formation of the Nova Scotia Arts Council supporting professionals in acquiring federal funding, is the federal government providing any federal funding to support you in the development of your program, which in turn supports those you represent. I would presume the Canada Arts Council is not only there to provide direct grants, but you require funding as well.
MS. BABINEAU: That is not part of their mandate, no.
MR. OLIVE: So the federal government is not required to help support, we are putting $1.25 million into this to help you develop programs to help the professionals and the federal government is putting none in. Is that what you are telling me?
MS. BABINEAU: Not directly. Do you want to answer? It is a broader question.
MR. TERRIS: It is kind of a jurisdictional question. The Canada Arts Council is, in fact, investing a lot of money in Nova Scotia, it just does it directly to the arts organizations. So the artists and arts organizations apply directly to the Canada Arts Council for funding to run their organizations or to do their creative research. Nova Scotia does the exact same thing at the provincial level. They are completely separate entities, they talk to each other but it is not part of the Canada Arts Council's mandate to support the provincial arts councils.
MR. OLIVE: Is there input from the - and I don't mean to belabour this but - Nova Scotia Arts Council at the federal level in the distribution of approved grants?
MR. TERRIS: No, nor should there be.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I just ask a quick question? In terms of the 30 per cent success rate increase, what percentage, or do you have access to this information, of Nova Scotia artists, how would we compare to other provinces? Are we getting less than our population base would allow for, or do you know that statistic?
MS. BABINEAU: I don't have that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have increased, but I am just wondering in comparison with other provinces.
MR. TERRIS: I did some research about eight years ago in which I looked at where Canada Arts Council money went, not by province but by region. I divided the country up
into four western, four Atlantic and two central - Ontario, Quebec - provinces, and consistently, on a per capita basis, Quebec and Ontario got more. Consistently the Atlantic Region got the least, and the western provinces were somewhere in the middle. If you plotted it over time, the curves were getting farther apart. Atlantic Canada was falling farther and farther behind. I published that information in Arts Atlantic, and Canada Arts Council screamed and yelled. They didn't like it, but it was the truth. They said, we only fund on the basis of excellence and we don't have any regional criteria. There was a big argument that ensued.
I think as a result of that they have shifted their consciousness a little. I don't know what you would get if you plotted it now, this was done quite some time ago. My sense is that partly because we have the Nova Scotia Arts Council, we are now doing better in terms of accessing Canada Arts Council money than we did 10 years ago. My sense is that now there is some degree of equity in what we are getting from the Canada Arts Council.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Robert.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: I don't think there is any question, the evidence you presented is pretty clear that through the Arts Council and the network focusing the internal operations or the internal network of artists in the cultural sector, as well as focusing the external view of the cultural sector, has had an impact in terms of the growth throughout the province and the role of the cultural sector in the Province of Nova Scotia.
It has been part of our policy for years to set up an Arts Council. My colleague, Eileen O'Connell, of course, was a big proponent of the Arts Council. We are really glad to see it finally get established and supported the government in doing that. I think it has shown itself to be very valuable in the role that it has played. We would want to see that role continue and be strengthened.
I guess I would ask, if I may, the outgoing chair of the Arts Council - and you, as well, Andrew, as someone who worked diligently to get the Arts Council set up - given the experience of the past few years, what needs to be done, other than funding? We will discuss that as well but what needs to be done to support the legitimacy of the Arts Council within the cultural sector, in the Province of Nova Scotia, and to continue to do its work? What advice do you have for us, as legislators, on what we need to keep our eye on to make sure that the Arts Council grows in its role?
MS. BABINEAU: I think one of the difficulties that we have faced this year is, we had a long-term strategic plan, as you know, which included the addition of an artist-in-the-community program which we feel is very important. As we started the council and projected our funding expectations - of course, there has been a real bump in that right now. I think stability in funding is going to be very important. If, from year to year, the Arts Council is
unsure of what its true actual budget projections can be, it makes it very difficult to plan long term. Long-term planning is essential to any kind of success. So I think that is one area.
It is stability. I probably shouldn't even say this but it is not even so much the amount of money - although that is very important - it is the stability. That is important to the artists and arts organizations who work with the Nova Scotia Arts Council, as well. A theatre group, for instance, does not plan from year to year. They plan a three year projection. So if our funding is not consistent, theirs is not consistent. I think that is probably the major concern right at the moment.
Also, the responsibilities of the Arts Council that the government - the ways in which the Arts Council could work in partnership with the government is to ensure that public funds are used in an open way, as Andrew has alluded to just a moment ago.
We feel that we do have a very transparent process with the foundation for culture and heritage now being established. Our process is very similar to theirs. We can work very closely together with them in helping the arts community. That is where, I think, we see things right now.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Andrew, I pass it over to you. One of the other parts of that question is the ability of the Arts Council to balance the regional pressures or the competition, if you will, between the centre, Halifax, and the regions.
MS. BABINEAU: That is something that we are certainly in discussion about. This has been an intention of the Arts Council from the very beginning. If you have had an opportunity to read any of our policies, our policy from the very beginning was to be concerned with the traditionally underfunded.
Part of the reason we have our tours of staff is to assist the artists from other regions in not only improving their grant applications for funding, but also in addressing concerns that they have in their organizational funding, or their organizational structure.
Last year, the council undertook a tour; this was council, not staff. It was the members of the council, themselves, who toured the province. We visited sites all through the province, to introduce the Arts Council to those who were not familiar with it but also to discuss the concerns of the other communities.
From all of this, we do see a real need for an artist-in-the-community program that has been on our books from the very beginning but we have not been able to ensure its continuance in funding. It is still very much a part of the future plan.
In our peer assessment panels, we are, minimally, 50 per cent metro, 50 per cent outside of metro. Outside of metro representation is, minimally, 50 per cent.
We keep statistics on funding from many different points of view. As we look at the relationship of the applications from metro and from outside the area, and the success of funding, thus far, we have found that it is consistent with the applications. What we would like to see improve and what we would like to see grow are the number of applications coming from other areas of the province. We are working toward that. The staff is holding, as we mentioned before, several meetings, clinics. We are finding other ways of communicating.
Just a little anecdote. In one of the communities that I visited outside of the metro area, in talking with the artists - we had sent out postcards and had them placed all over these communities, and we had some public announcements. They asked us how we had distributed our information and, of course, we had used the website and so forth. Well, I don't have a computer; well, no, I don't go into the library; well, no, I don't get the newspapers. How can we reach you? Well, I read the flyer that is in the grocery store. That is very real and we are aware of it. For those communities, that is wonderful, the community spirit is wonderful in these communities. What we are trying to look at is a way of networking within the community.
What we were pleased with in our tour was that the leaders in the communities did come to our meetings. We didn't have huge numbers of people but we did have the leaders. So from that, we are developing a network of communicators. We are working at it from several points of view.
MR. TERRIS: Do you want me to address, specifically, the Arts Council and issues surrounding the Arts Council?
My sense is that the Arts Council does, without specific - what is the word I want - criteria, or regional quota, a very good job of getting money outside of metro. I have looked at the numbers and I am always impressed by the number of artists and organizations outside of metro that are being funded by the Arts Council.
I was also going to do a huge argument with an old friend of mine, Parker Barss Donham, who was saying, oh, Cape Breton is getting screwed, Cape Breton is getting screwed. That is what he always screams. (Laughter)
Some actually went and spent three or four hours looking at the percentage of Cape Bretoners on the Arts Council, the percentage of money that was going to Cape Breton. In fact, Cape Breton - and I see there is nobody from Cape Breton on this committee so this may fall on deaf ears - was fairly represented on the adjudication committees and also was getting a reasonably fair share of the grant money that was going out. I think the Arts Council is, in fact, doing a good job and paying attention and concerned that it be improved.
As I was listening to Ninette, I was thinking that this issue of development outside of Halifax, I think, is an extremely important one. I am going to go on a slight tangent here but I think it is a really important one. I was talking about how important it is to develop the cultural industries. That is at one end of the scale. At the other end of the scale is the importance of developing grass-roots community organizations that deal with culture in the community. Part of your problem with getting the word out is that you don't have people on the ground in the communities.
There is a fledgling network of community arts councils. There are places like Annapolis Royal which have the Annapolis Region Community Arts Council, which has been very active for a long time and does all kinds of incredible stuff in the community. There is a range. Annapolis Royal is very well organized; Cape Breton is fairly well organized, but there are other areas that are struggling.
Again, when the budget cuts came down, one of the things that got cut was funding to community arts councils. In Antigonish - it is not a lot of money - their allotment went from something like $2,000 to $1,500; not a huge amount of money but a 25 per cent cut and it was done very quietly. I didn't even know about it until I went to Antigonish.
This is a mistake. The numbers are not large and, yet, investing in these grass-roots community cultural organizations is an extremely important way of fostering cultural development in small communities.
I would argue it might even be more important than some of the big bucks that are being thrown at - in the recently announced programs, I think, something like a total of $600,000 for tourism development, cultural development and museum development. That is good but there is a missing link here and that is the grass-roots community organization, the people that are on the ground, in the community, know the issues.
Once you get those kind of organizations in place, they can help people in the community to link with the Arts Council, the cultural network, the Film Development Corporation. You need people in the community who know who the players are, know how the bureaucracy works, knows where to get money, knows how to plug people in to the system. That is absolutely essential and it is something that we are really missing here.
I am sorry, I sort of jumped off into a tangent but I think it is an extremely important one.
MS. BABINEAU: Just further to that, the Arts Infusion Program that we have, our education program, of the seven schools that we are working with directly, only one is in metro and that one is in the former county; it is in Sackville. We are working with artists, teachers and schools, totally outside of metro in that particular program. We do keep communication going through the regional arts council, as Andrew as mentioned, as well.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: I do have another question. I hope you don't think my question was, in any way, a criticism. I guess I appreciate the difficult balance. I think there has been good work being done and it is always something that you need to keep working on.
The second and, I guess, the last question I wanted to pick up on was the tax credit for the new media or issue, that you raised, Andrew. I know there is such competition across the jurisdictions in this country for that film business. The pressure has been on to at least maintain, within a few percentages, a film tax credit with other jurisdictions and that that has helped to prevent companies from picking up and moving elsewhere; many of them have said to me, you know, we would in a second, if that gap got too large.
I am concerned with what you are saying about what is happening with respect to the tax credit for new media. It is in Quebec, primarily, where they have jumped in. Do you want to expand a bit on that?
MR. TERRIS: I'm not sure that I have that much to add, other than what I have said. If you want more detailed arguments, under general information, the first item is a brief that we did to the Voluntary Planning . . .
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: In terms of the economic impact I understand that. I guess what I . . .
MR. TERRIS: But just in terms of the importance of new media for the future of cultural development and economic development, this brief that we submitted to the Voluntary Planning task force, those kinds of arguments are in here. I guess I am not sure what additional information you are looking for.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: I guess what I am wondering about is how that competition is developing across this country and the imperativeness of our action.
MR. TERRIS: My sense is, if we want a new media industry in Nova Scotia - I talked to Steve Comeau at Collideascope and there would be real advantages to him moving to Quebec. I was talking to him recently. When he goes to national meetings they say, what the hell are you doing in Nova Scotia? Why are you toughing it out there? Some of us really like living here and we want to stay here - there comes a point at which - and again, this publisher colleague that I was talking to was saying, at a certain point - you have to forget your
emotional commitments to this province because if you cannot be competitive and stay here, at some point, if you are committed to your business, you have to go elsewhere.
My fear is that unless we provide some sort of minimum competitive support to these industries, because other provinces see how important they are not just to current but to a future economic development, so they are investing in them. If Nova Scotia doesn't do the same, we will lose that opportunity. The potential is just phenomenal. I think we all know that.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: The beauty, of course, of that form of tax credit is, the money is spent first, right?
MR. DOWNE: And they don't pay it out.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: No, that's right.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
MR. MACPHAIL: Could I add to that? Right now, in Quebec there is a large growth. I have seen some of their largest building starts in the City of Montreal because they are building, literally, a community for the new media there. I think that what we have in Nova Scotia is that the province is small enough that you can see new media grow throughout the province, it doesn't all have to be metro-based. There is that benefit, as well as all the spin-offs that happen to the rest of the economy, so it is not just all isolated and located in the culture sector. It is very critical for the province, I think.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thanks, Keith. Thanks, Robert. Two quick questions, if I could ask. Really, I am picking up what Robert was mentioning. I wear my hat as a rural MLA.
In responding a little bit to your comment about the need for peer review - and I agree with that, to take it outside of any sort of bureaucratic favouritism. The problem is that the same thing can be said or could possibly be said - and I am glad to hear some of the things we are doing to encourage rural artists and communities to access the money through the Nova Scotia Arts Council, the same way the federal Arts Council responded to you, Andrew, some years ago. Well, it is all based on peer review. We cannot help it if the best artists are in Ontario.
One could do the same thing and say, well, it is all based on peer review, we cannot help it if the best artists live in Halifax. If your basis starts with the majority of your people being from Halifax, you will end up with them reviewing each other and awarding to each other. There is, I think, an issue that needs to be kept in mind and there are ways around it that you have mentioned, that I am glad to hear and you have mentioned, Andrew. I just want to flag that.
I looked through the grants to the various areas. Of course, I come from an area that has a fairly vibrant cultural community and arts community in Kings County. As an MLA for that area, tick off, we got this, we got that, we got that. (Laughter) I am not really complaining for my area but you do need to keep in mind, in this province of ours, we have a problem of one very large urban centre and the balance is important. That is just a comment. I am glad to hear the things you are looking at. I just mentioned, I saw a little contradiction in your comment about federal funding versus provincial funding.
The question I do have is in terms of corporate funding and the draft about the Aliant company coming through with this prize. I am interested in this because I think this is an area for future growth. Do you pursue corporate funding? Do you have any statistics about facts/figures for corporate funding for culture? Do you have any figures about how that has grown, what the percentage of that is of the cultural budget and do you pursue corporations outside of the borders of the Maritimes as well? Is there potential in that area? I am interested in the area of corporate funding for the arts and for culture.
MS. BABINEAU: I will address it first, if it is okay. The endowment fund, is where any funding other than in partnership endeavours does go for the Arts Council, any of the funding outside of government that we realize funnels through the endowment fund. We, in our efforts to increase the endowment fund, were very concerned that as a council, as the new players in this whole funding matter, did not, in any way, appear to or actually jeopardize the direct corporate funding that the cultural agencies in Nova Scotia already receive. Your major organizations, we don't have a great deal of corporate funding available in Nova Scotia at the moment.
The major agencies - Neptune Theatre, Symphony Nova Scotia and so forth - have worked very hard to establish relationships with corporations. Any funding that we look for is deemed to be, and we insist upon, funding that is over and above other funding that is already in place for the cultural community. This has been a very sensitive area with the corporations. It is one that we have dealt with very slowly and very carefully. The partnership with MTT and Aliant was specifically for new media prizes and awards to recognize the importance and growing new media industry. Partnership with J.W. McConnell Foundation was by their invitation specifically for learning through the arts.
I do foresee, and again I am not carrying on the responsibility for the Arts Council beyond another short time, but I do foresee that we are entering a time when the Arts Council will certainly be seeking additional partnerships in funding for specific causes that are over and above the funding that is already in place or already committed to the other cultural agencies in Nova Scotia and organizations. It would be very easy for a large corporation to say, well, I am really tired of having the theatre come after me and the art gallery come after me for funding. If I give it to the Arts Council, they will look after everybody, that is easy. Then what does that do to the sponsorship and corporate funding for all of the agencies and
organizations, actually, in Nova Scotia? So it is an area that we have looked at very carefully. It is part of our projected plan to continue to seek partnerships.
MR. TERRIS: This is an important issue. Again, like the Arts Council, we don't want to be seen to be competing with our constituency for corporate funding. That would be very difficult and corporate funding is limited. Everybody is knocking on their doors with government cutbacks and in terms of the arts, what corporations are really looking for is profile. It has really become much more a part of their advertising line and part of their - I don't want to be too cynical but they are looking for their logo on high profile events because it is about being seen publicly to be supporting events. So if you are doing anything that is low profile or not sexy or too radical, you will not get corporate support. That is why it is important to have the Arts Council because the Arts Council can invest in those areas which are more experimental. That work is extremely important because without that experimental work, what you have is something very static that doesn't change, it is not creative. Corporate investment is important, it is critical but it is going to the more high profile and conservative work. I just can't say this strongly enough. It is also important to have public investment in the research and development side of culture which is the experimental work because that is what drives the creative process.
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you know any stats on how we are doing in terms of corporate sponsorship, vis-a-vis the rest of Canada?
MR. TERRIS: There probably are statistics available, I am not sure. There is the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada. They do keep statistics. Whether they do provincial breakdowns, I don't know. I haven't seen their statistics lately.
MR. JAMES DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, I am not a member of the committee so I won't hold things up. I know the members to my left have some questions they would like to ask. I certainly want to, first of all, thank the presenters. I was astounded by the phenomenal growth of the culture sector over the past nine years and at the same time we have to be ever mindful of how public funds are utilized and we have to spend in a responsible manner. In spite of the difficult hand this government was dealt with respect to the fiscal situation in the Province of Nova Scotia, I am pleased that the Department of Tourism and Culture has indeed remained intact, is the core business functions and the goals and the priorities. Again, we all have to tighten our belts and be more responsible to those who pay the bills.
Having said that, I just want to mention, Ms. Babineau, I am sure your departure will be a great loss to the Arts Council and hopefully some other organization will see a gain by your presence and I wish you great success in your future endeavours. I will pass on, Mr. Chairman.
MS. BABINEAU: Thank you very much.
MR. BARRY BARNET: Mr. Chairman, I served for a year and one-half or two years, I guess, on Halifax Regional Grants Committee. One of the things I observed and it had been brought to my attention at that point in time, during my service, was that, in fact, it seemed to sustain existing grants to existing organizations but it was difficult for new ones to get some uptake. It seemed to me that regardless of how good an application was from an upstart that because somebody had been there and there was a reliance on that grant, that the new upstart group, or somebody who was a first-time applicant was overlooked because, in fact, the sentiment was that we have to continue to protect those who have already made applications. I guess my question is, along that line, what have you done as an industry to try to resolve some of those issues, that particular issue?
MS. BABINEAU: With the Arts Council, what you are talking about is operating funding, I believe, the operating grants.
MR. BARNET: Operating grants to, like Shakespeare by the Sea is an example. They received annually $25,000 and if another like organization came in, there was no room for them because of the fact they came, made their presentation and we have been here for five years and we deserve that $25,000 a year and the next group in, just because they weren't there first, always seemed to be left off the list. To me it is a problem. It is a matter of sharing the resources.
MS. BABINEAU: It is of concern, as well, to the council. I think first of all it is important to realize that there are two types of funding that the council is engaged with and one is project funding, which is a specific application for a specific project. The other is operating funding which is for the organizational aspect of an arts organization. The reason why the organizational funding is variable only within a small percentage, and it can be variable within a small percentage, with our peer assessment panels, they have felt to this point that all of the organizations we fund are operating minimally; so they are not being over-funded, they are being underfunded.
Any organization has to do long-term planning. If you jeopardize the funding beyond a minimal percentage, then their long-term planning is not possible. Shakespeare by the Sea, for instance, they need to have a long-term assurance of a minimal amount of their operating grant, in order to plan the next two seasons. That is one of the reasons. They have the ability, though, to apply for project funding for specific projects, which increases their funding.
As far as new organizations coming in, the one year that the Arts Council did receive an increment, our budget went up to $1.5 million - we did receive an increment that year - and two new organizations were included in the operation funding. One organization's funding was increased because of their growth.
MR. BARNET: It has been a criticism that has been raised to me in the past that it doesn't allow for new people, it just maintains the same existing organizations in terms of operating grant money. I certainly understand that obviously, it is difficult to make these decisions; as somebody who has been in the position of having to wrestle with some of these decisions, it is a tough thing. I share some of the concerns with respect to metro and outside of metro. If you look through the newsletter, to me it seems hardly defensible, for example, of the operating grants for 2000-01, none for Cape Breton, 75 per cent for metro and 25 per cent for outside of metro. I think part of the problem there is the fact that those guys were the first ones in and they get sustained because it is difficult to cut them off.
If you go to individuals and you look at this and analyse it from those in metro to those outside of metro and if you analyse it even further than that and look at the ones from Cape Breton, well, quite frankly, the people of Cape Breton, at least my opinion, have a valid concern. I have gone through this and on Page 4, I could only find five grants to organizations outside of Cape Breton, yet they represent a large portion of the population. It is difficult to defend the fact that in some segments of the applications, they were completely shut out.
MS. BABINEAU: What you don't have here and what is available from the Arts Council is the percentage of applications. The percentage of success has to be measured against the percentage of applications.
MR. BARNET: That would be good to have, but what I am looking at is simply those people who have been successful in getting an application through.
MS. BABINEAU: But if we have one application from Cape Breton and that application is successful, that is a 100 per cent rate of success. If we have 50 from metro and 5 are successful, that is a much smaller rate of success. These are an indication of the individuals and the organizations that have been successful, which we publish in our annual report, but there are other statistics that need to be looked at in order to really interpret what this means.
MR. BARNET: I wouldn't mind seeing that at some point in time, it certainly would help me understand the circumstances surrounding that. If I could just change gears a little bit . . .
MR. TERRIS: Can I just quickly respond to that because I think these are issues that I have dealt with in relation to the Canada Arts Council and the Nova Scotia Arts Council. What the problem is, it is not that the Arts Council is out to screw Cape Breton, the problem is that people in Cape Breton, like the people in Nova Scotia used to be, are not used to dealing with this kind of system. Again, I think this supports my argument for having people on the ground in Cape Breton who can help the Cape Breton artists get to the point where they know about the Arts Council and they know how to apply. I know a lot of Cape Breton
artists and this is a problem; they have never had to deal with an arm's-length granting agency and they don't know how to write grant applications.
I will say I think the Arts Council has really gone out of its way to try to help people outside of metro learn how the system works and how they can access the system. Over time I think you will see an improvement in the number of grants going to Cape Breton because the people there will learn how the system works, how to apply, how to be successful in it. I challenge anyone to find a better way of doing business with artists, there is no better way. This is the most fair, open, equitable and transparent way.
MR. BARNET: I agree. Maybe it is the best way, but one thing you have to look at is the fact that when you take this newsletter and actually mark metro and outside of metro and then you go further than that and look at Cape Breton, as it stands today in 2000-2001, if I were an artist in Cape Breton I would feel a little bit cheated, to tell you the truth.
If I could shift gears and go to another line of questioning, one of the things that you talked about was the province's commitment to the Arts Council. What I didn't hear and would like to know is how we compare to other provinces in terms of the commitment to the Arts Council and particularly the ones similar to us in size, like Saskatchewan and New Brunswick? How are we doing in that regard, do you know?
MS. BABINEAU: I don't have the figures in front of me. With the most recent budget we are not funded to the same degree as other provinces.
MR. BARNET: As Saskatchewan and New Brunswick?
MS. BABINEAU: Certainly not as Saskatchewan. New Brunswick is in the process of reforming their arts council so it is difficult to compare. They have an arts board and an arts council and you would have to take the figures from the two. They run quite differently, so we would have to . . .
MR. BARNET: How are we doing in terms of the percentage of the Arts Council's budget that comes from government and the percentage that comes from other? How are we doing from that point of view?
MS. BABINEAU: Compared to what?
MR. BARNET: Compared to other provinces.
MS. BABINEAU: We have only been in existence for four years and haven't built the long-term relationships that other councils have. Councils are set up quite differently across the country depending upon their relationship to other agencies. For instance, some of them
are funded through lotteries. Again, when you do the comparisons you have to know the circumstances surrounding them.
MR. BARNET: That is information I would like to have at some point in time and the reason that I asked that was I saw a news article surrounding the Canadian corporate donations to organizations and American corporate donations to organizations. I found it interesting that in Canada, according to this article, corporations donate about 1 per cent of their profits and in the United States they donate 3 per cent. I wonder if it is not simply a matter that organizations aren't as active in going out looking for funding from corporations.
I know that on a community basis, if I went to talk to the pizza shops in Sackville, they have had their doors knocked on probably 10 to 15 times a day. I wonder beyond just a community basis, to go to a large corporate head office and that sort of thing, whether or not we are doing the same type of job the Americans are doing. If those numbers are correct, obviously they are either selling their ideas better than we are or the alternative, which I don't believe is true, is that American corporations are more generous than Canadians. Maybe it has something to do with tax law. Maybe there is something there that might have an impact.
MS. BABINEAU: Big time. It has to do with tax law.
MR. MACPHAIL: I think it is also accessibility. You don't find a lot of corporate offices in Nova Scotia where you can walk in to do this. Coming from wearing that hat for several years for several organizations, you spend an awful lot of effort trying to make those accesses and you are right, the local people get asked all of the time because you can actually access those people. We have seen a lot of slippage, even in Halifax, of corporate businesses that you can make a pitch to, it is very difficult. So now what you end up doing is you make the pitch to the corporate office in Halifax and that gets passed along to the national office in Toronto. We don't have the bucks to fly to Toronto to make that pitch personally, it becomes really difficult.
MR. BARNET: The one thing I would like to add, and I am trying not to sound a little bit sour, there are some corporations that quite frankly do a wonderful job and I don't want to paint everybody with the same brush. I know that in my community there is a small upstart company that just recently gave $200,000 to a community group. That is a phenomenal contribution from an individual in an upstart company. Not every Canadian company is that way, and not every time you go to the door do you come away with less than you expected. I know that the competition out there is difficult because quite frankly you are also now dealing with competing for money with health care and education and these sorts of things.
That is a result of the legacy that we have been left with as a government, the fact that we have to make adjustments throughout our whole mandate, and quite frankly it is a difficult thing for me as an elected official to try to balance some of these decisions, but I know that
when Nova Scotians talk to Barry Barnet, they rank things. Quite frankly, we as elected officials have to accept the fact that they have made certain rankings, and that is why some of the tough and difficult decisions this government has made have become reality.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I just pick up very quickly on a suggestion Barry made, and then we will move on because we are running out of time. In terms of funding for existing, Shakespeare by the Sea for example, has any thought been given to reducing the funding over a 5 or 10 year period in order to free up money for new things?
MS. BABINEAU: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is that a plan that you have looked at?
MS. BABINEAU: Yes.
MR. WILLIAM DOOKS: I am going to pass over to my colleague. He has 20 questions, I believe, there on the sheet.
MR. OLIVE: Not quite. I too would like to thank Andrew, Keith and Ninette for their presentation. The interesting part about being in politics for me is that 10 years ago I quite honestly did not take as much of an interest in the cultural environment as I should have. Through politics and other things, I have become acutely aware of the need to sustain such things as the Nova Scotia Arts Council. In fact, when you look at the millions of dollars that are created in the economy through Tourism and Culture, $1.25 million is not a lot of money. I would like to sort of pre-empt my questions by indicating that I do support the Arts Council and do support funding for it and in fact would support increased funding for it as well as support for the Nova Scotia Cultural Network.
My colleague did mention an issue that I don't think should be let go too easily because anybody that I have talked to in the cultural and tourism area have been very pleased with the fact that back in July 1999 we salvaged Tourism and Culture from the umbrella of Education of which it was competing with for the last number of years for dollars and competing quite unfairly. In fact, the government has taken a major effort to bring Tourism and Culture back to the forefront, recognizing its value to the province. I don't think it is an unfair statement to make sure that that point is made.
Just very quickly I would like to go back to this issue of the Canada Arts Council. Ninette, you mentioned that you are building a network of communications around the province through local arts council groups. One question I would have is, does the Nova Scotia Arts Council have representation from Canada Arts Council, either on its board or in its decision-making process in Nova Scotia?
MS. BABINEAU: No. We are not . . .
MR. OLIVE: Andrew mentioned that one of his concerns was that decisions weren't being made, and I will make an implication here from what he made, that the decisions weren't being made necessarily in the best interests of culture, the Culture Network or the members of the Arts Council in the previous years. We can go back 15, 20 years, I am not talking six or seven years, let's call it what it was. Now that the Arts Council is here, there is a much more united approach and more cooperative effort in Nova Scotia in getting financial support out to the people that can most benefit and should benefit, and yet we allow, today, the Canada Arts Council to not directly fund, or I should say that we put up with the fact that they don't directly fund the Nova Scotia Arts Council, and in fact offshore, that being offshore Nova Scotia, they are making the decisions, peer groups are not, they are not being made here. They are making decisions on the allocation of funds.
MR. TERRIS: Don't go there. I think you are really off the mark.
MR. OLIVE: Well, straighten me out, please.
MR. TERRIS: It is not the Canada Arts Council's job to fund the Nova Scotia Arts Council, and it is not appropriate.
MR. OLIVE: You made that point, I understand that.
MR. TERRIS: We do have a representative from Nova Scotia on the Canada Arts Council, so Nova Scotia does have representation. They are completely separate entities. I think the question that you have to ask is, is Nova Scotia benefiting from the existence of the Canada Arts Council, and I would say unquestionably we are. The Canada Arts Council has made changes in its approach to regional funding, it is much more aware of regional issues, it is much more aware of diversity issues. It has gone out of its way to look at cultural traditions outside of the European tradition because we now have a huge Chinese immigrant population, a lot of new immigrants who bring different cultural traditions, so they are looking well beyond the European tradition. They are looking at Aboriginal culture, they are doing a lot of initiatives to sort of broaden the mix.
I think the question you have to ask is, are the members of the arts community in Nova Scotia, who are the beneficiaries of the Canada Arts Council, satisfied with the way the Canada Arts Council is operating, are we satisfied with the way the Nova Scotia Arts Council is operating? Yes, there are always problems, as Mr. Barnet has pointed out, yes we can do better. My sense is that these are open, accountable systems. We used to try in the old days to look at how the provincial government was spending its cultural money. You couldn't find it, it was buried in the Public Accounts. You have a very open and transparent system there that allows you to look and see where the money is going. That is an absolute improvement over the way things used to be. The Canada Arts Council is the same way, it publishes those kinds of reports. They are accountable to the community and the community can give feedback.
It is not a question of us having direct representation from the Nova Scotia Arts Council to the Canada Arts Council, or the Canada Arts Council giving money to the Nova Scotia Arts Council. The system is not set up to work that way, nor should it.
MR. MACPHAIL: I think the other clarification - correct me, Ninette, you would know best - the Canada Arts Council is based on peer assessment too. Perhaps what the issue becomes, if there is an issue, is much the same as the Nova Scotia Arts Council trying to reach out to the Nova Scotia communities; the Canada Arts Council maybe still has to work harder on reaching out to all Canadian communities. I think in years past it didn't do as good a job as it perhaps is doing now.
MS. BABINEAU: There is a real awareness now.
MR. OLIVE: If I could move along, we are on a time limit. I think my colleagues opposite might have a few more questions. There has been a lot of reference to Quebec. I would like to have provided to the committee, if I could, statistics that would indicate whether or not the federal government does directly support the Quebec Arts Council and, if so, by how much, and in relation to that, in its dollar support, how much of the total amount that goes to Quebec is split - if, in fact, it goes to the Quebec Arts Council - between the Quebec Arts Council and as how it does here, directly to the applicants. I would suggest that it is not a fair comparison.
When you look at both Ontario and Quebec, Quebec has 141,000 people employed, Ontario has 248,000 people; they both have an increase of 27 per cent and 21 per cent respectively. We have a mere 13,000 employed. There may well be a federal government policy that would clearly show a lot of support for continued development and promotion in favour of the Province of Quebec versus that of Atlantic Canada, specifically Nova Scotia. I would like to know what those numbers are, as it relates to the per capita dollars spent in Nova Scotia and in Quebec.
I have a question on the Portia White Award. It says in the brochure, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, that you only have to be a resident four years prior to the award to be qualified. I feel somewhat uncomfortable with that. That seems to be a rather short period of time to be eligible for such a prestigious award in Nova Scotia.
MS. BABINEAU: Is that a question? (Laughter)
MR. OLIVE: No, it is just a comment. I would like to know, speaking from Dartmouth, the Eastern Front Theatre is a very unique theatre and, at last, it has a home in Dartmouth which we are all very proud of. This goes back to, perhaps, a comment that Barry made regarding the availability of funding. I talked to the people at the Eastern Front Theatre and they talk about how hard it is because they have to raise $500 for a costume budget to
put on something, or $1,000 for advertising, or whatever. Then I see places like the Neptune Theatre; they got $1 million, and they get so much there.
We are talking about helping people outside metro. I think that is important. Maybe we could confine metro to Peninsula Halifax and then put Dartmouth in the rural area for a minute. (Laughter) From the point of view of the availability of cultural funding, how do you rationalize the dollars that are spent in, really, a growing theatre like the Eastern Front, which is not your standard Neptune Theatre-type theatre; how do you rationalize the support for Eastern Front versus Neptune, for example?
MS. BABINEAU: Can I address that first?
MR. TERRIS: Go ahead. I want to get my teeth into that one. (Laughter)
MS. BABINEAU: All right. First of all, it would be very nice to put Dartmouth in the rural statistics; that might help Mr. Barnet's interpretation of what is in here. First of all, Neptune Theatre is funded directly by the Department of Culture and Tourism. It does not come under the jurisdiction of the Nova Scotia Arts Council.
As far as the Eastern Front Theatre is concerned, if you would look at the figures over the past three years that we have been in operation, I think you will find, through project funding, the Eastern Front Theatre, because of its excellence and because of its creativity and excellence of administration, as well as performance, has been very successful in receiving several project grants which, indeed, has affected their total financial picture of revenue from the Arts Council. That, again, answers the operating grant question: how can operating grant clients see a rise in their income? The project funding does offer that opportunity.
Do you want to go further?
MR. TERRIS: Yes, let's get down and dirty here. (Laughter) I don't want to belittle Neptune Theatre in any way, it is one of our cultural flagships. In strictly economic terms, it is a major player; it employs a lot of people, it trains a lot of people, it is an institution in our community and it is a very important institution in our community. Having said that, the fact that it is outside of the Nova Scotia Arts Council means that you have a board of directors which is very powerful, very influential, very politically connected and it can access resources, perhaps, to the detriment of other institutions because of the political power of its board. The same is true of the symphony, the same is true of the Atlantic Theatre Festival, and I am not so sure if it is quite so true of the Mermaid Theatre.
I would argue that if this is a concern to you, then think about putting Neptune Theatre, the Atlantic Theatre Festival, the Mermaid Theatre and the Atlantic Symphony under the auspices of the Nova Scotia Arts Council, where the funding is based not on the political power of the board, but on the merit of the project and the institution.
MR. OLIVE: Well, I think I had better stay away from that one. (Laughter)
MR. TERRIS: Oh, come on. We're getting down and dirty here. (Laughter)
MR. OLIVE: No, actually, I was pleased with Andrew's response. I think, if that is what the Arts Council and the Cultural Network believe, to go back to Wayne's question about what you expect government to do, if your response is - and that is a major statement that you just made.
MR. TERRIS: I am going to get into trouble for it. (Laughter)
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. OLIVE: Well, you probably are but the point is, that was not your response to Wayne's question, it was your response to my question, but I think it probably would be better as a response to Wayne's. I think if that is the attitude and that is the approach that the Cultural Network want to take in Nova Scotia, then the government and all members of government on both sides of the House should know that that is the position of the cultural network. If that is how you are going to advance in Nova Scotia, then we should know that that is a major plank in how you advance. Reallocation of the funding, maybe some more control over the management and the distribution, whatever - that is a major response, there is no question about that.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Somebody cut his mike off. (Laughter)
MR. OLIVE: Why, is it time? I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, I will give up the floor.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is this a question, Don, or is this a speech? (Laughter) We have another meeting and I have a few housekeeping things to do.
MR. DOWNE: This is a simple question. The fact that everybody is born again to two regions here, we talked about enterprise zones, having tax credit provisions in rural different than in urban because of the infrastructure that is here and the lack of infrastructure somewhere else. In light of the fact that there is a need for - and we all support the concept here and your own government policy is supporting . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Don, could you hurry and get the question, please?
MR. DOWNE: . . . not only the film but the multimedia production tax credit. I would move that we would support the concerns that were expressed here today, that government would implement its own policy and come forward in the next round with initiatives that will give support and foundation to the culture and arts community through your own government policy statement.
In light of what Tim's comments were in supporting this group - and I compliment Tim for taking that aggressive move forward, although your back stroke is not as good as it used to be. (Laughter) But your position was good. Mr. Chairman, I am moving . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do we have a motion on the floor? You wanted to say something, Keith, to the . . .
MR. MACPHAIL: Just as a follow-up, a number of points are starting to tie in together here on some of the funding. It goes back to, maybe, the first question you asked about corporate investment, followed up by Mr. Barnet and Mr. Olive's questions about funding. I think it goes back to when a lot of organizations do apply for funding. That is not all the funding that goes into any particular project or operation. Yet, when you start to look at Cape Breton - and, for example, I will use the art internship program, which is a 50/50 match - we had one application from Cape Breton because no one can find matching funds. That is where it gets down to the issues of where you can access the other funds to support it. That also ties in to accessing government money. It is a two-way street.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I'm sorry I'm rushing things along. Actually, in the middle of the meeting, I said to Mora that maybe we should end at 10:30 a.m. (Laughter)
We have a motion on the floor. I think it is a bit premature, to tell you the truth, because we are going to be listening to some theatre companies on November 14th - that was one of the housekeeping matters - and after that, museums and music. I personally find it premature. If you want to continue with it, maybe you could hold it until we have had further hearings, Don, or . . .
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: I wonder if we could pose that question to the department. Would that be a starting point in any way, Don? I think it is a good motion, but maybe as a starting point . . .
MR. OLIVE: What was the motion? I missed it.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: To determine what the government's position is and the department's position, vis-à-vis a tax credit for new media. Is that it?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Was that the specific motion?
MR. DOWNE: That, as well as a two-tiered system of taxation for urban and rural, which everybody here said there should be a benefit for rural development, vis-à-vis Halifax . . .
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Seeks clarification from the new department.
MR. DOWNE: . . . I guess the simple way of doing it for you is I would move that we support this initiative to the government. Then the government will make the final decision, ultimately, on financial measures. But we would support those concepts which is exactly your government policy, by the way, that was enunciated back in June.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I know you have a motion but in light of what Robert said, could we find some clarification on the situation now, particularly since we have a resource in that Russell Kelly is now working for the government and was the director. Much of the questions and statistics that Tim is interested in getting, he might have access to, as well as Barry, and myself and everyone on this board. Would it be possible or do you want us to vote on the issue?
MR. DOWNE: I am not being specific with the amount of the tax credit. That would be the outcome of the information that people are requiring, that we are in line with Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Clearly, my point here is, are we, as a body, prepared to show support for the arts and cultural community by passing that motion for the government to consider those initiatives? We have all said the same thing around this table and here is an opportunity to show exactly what we have been saying, that the government would consider that.
MR. OLIVE: If I could just comment. I think we are being somewhat premature. I think we have to hear from the other stakeholders before we proceed in that direction. I would like to see us delay the motion. I don't have any particular problem with you approaching the minister and asking for an update on any tax credit status programs that may be now or in the future, but I don't think it is our position here to advance that issue at this point in time.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I just talked to Mora and she tells me the procedure normally is we would hear from the various witnesses, then we approach the department with various questions we have that come out of our hearings and then at that stage, your motion would be very much in order. Would you mind saving it?
MR. DOWNE: Just a clarification if I can with Mora, what is coming in next has nothing to do with the multi-media tax credit, in all due respect. It ties directly to what these people . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Music might, for example . . .
MR. DOWNE: Well there is another tax credit provision for that.
MR. OLIVE: It is all government money.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: If I may, I don't think there is anything that prevents this committee from passing a motion recommending anything to a particular department, frankly.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, there is nothing that prevents it, but I would just like to hear from everybody first.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Don, clearly this is going to be defeated and I think it is a good motion, but I wonder if we want to make the request of the department of what their position is on this question of a tax credit for the new media section and ask for an answer in a reasonable length of time. If you want make the motion and stick with it, I will vote with you, I don't mind at all but I am afraid our friends across the room are probably going to defeat it.
MR. DOWNE: That is their choice. The bottom line here in all due respect . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have run out of time really, Don.
MR. DOWNE: . . . it is the policy of the government of the day. In their policy cyber bulletin here it clearly talks about some of their policies of their 243 promises and that is in there. So we are not flying in the face of your promises.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Don, we have run out of time and I need you to decide very quickly, do you want to take Robert's suggestion or do you want to keep with your motion?
MR. DOWNE: No, I am prepared to make the motion. We can vote on it and if they defeat it then I will be bringing it back again because I believe strongly in this issue.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have a motion on the floor. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye . . .
MR. OLIVE: Mr. Chairman, before the vote we should be allowed to discuss this. You have entertained a motion and before you have the vote we should be allowed to discuss it, time or otherwise. I guess my point is that we have agreed on a certain level that we will enquire to the minister as to the current or future status of any tax credits for the new industry. I believe this motion is game playing. What it is, a motion has been put on the floor, the government says no, the government may vote no and the headline, or whatever, is, government defeats motion for tax credit. That is not what we are here for, we are supposed to be non-partisan, we want to get the answer from the minister. This motion is out of order, I mean it is just game playing, that is all it is and it is a travesty on the process here, as far as I am concerned.
MR. BARNET: I can't disagree. I agree completely that the intent here is to try to embarrass the government members. The fact is that we have these fine ladies and gentlemen here with us today. The fact is that it is in isolation of the big picture; the fact that we have problems with the debt, deficit, health care, education and all these sorts of things, it would be wonderful if we dealt with everything in isolation of each other. As a government, we can't do that.
We know some of the decisions that we are going to make are going to be unpopular with small groups and organizations. At the same level, we have a huge task ahead of us and to slice out this one particular issue and say we are going to recommend to the government that we do this, in isolation of the big picture, is both wrong and unfair. Quite frankly, there is a process put in place and that is the budget process, which allows the members of the Opposition to question and make recommendations . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: I am going to have to step in at this point (Interruptions) Could I please have order! It is time for the question.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is defeated.
We are going to be querying the department about this issue in the future so this will come back and we will have discussion on this issue.
MR. ROBERT CHISHOLM: Mr. Chairman, before you do that, Tim raised a few questions, which he thought were valuable, of the presenters here. I think this information could be sought through a government department, the Culture Department or whatever, instead of stretching their already scarce resources. I didn't want you to leave here and go out and start trying to pull that information together, if that is okay? (Interruption)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before you go, on November 14th we are looking at theatre groups and then after that music. Those will be set up for November 14th.
We are adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:15 a.m.]
