Finance Committee — Bill C-38 — Museums

Issues regard­ing Museums

Meet­ing 67: May 31st 2012

Mr. John McAv­ity (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Cana­dian Muse­ums Association):

I’m very pleased to be here, and for a cou­ple of rea­sons. One rea­son is that I feel right at home in this room, because this struc­ture, this build­ing we’re in, used to be the Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy. I remem­ber tour­ing it before it was offi­cially opened.

 

The CMA is very pleased to be here to dis­cuss divi­sion 47 of the bill, which includes the amend­ments for Canada’s trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tions program.

 

But first, before I go into details on that, I’d like to take an oppor­tu­nity to say how very pleased we are as a sec­tor over this bud­get. In fact, we’ve seen three out of the four rec­om­men­da­tions that we made being imple­mented in this leg­is­la­tion, so we as a sec­tor are very pleased.

 

Let me just men­tion what the three rec­om­men­da­tions are: first, no cuts to the national muse­ums over a three-year period, and no cuts to sup­port pro­grams for muse­ums or for most sup­port pro­grams that we’re aware of; sec­ondly, an increase in youth employ­ment of $50 mil­lion, a small part of which we hope will come to the museum sec­tor, as we are cur­rently turn­ing down 90% of all appli­ca­tions for intern­ships each year; and finally, a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the indem­ni­fi­ca­tion pro­gram for large trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tions, which I’m here to dis­cuss today.

 

Divi­sion 47 includes only three short but very impor­tant amend­ments that will have a major impact on all Cana­di­ans and their com­mu­ni­ties. These amend­ments will more than dou­ble the capac­ity of the indem­ni­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, giv­ing Cana­di­ans rare oppor­tu­ni­ties to see exhibits that they would never nor­mally be able to see, and result­ing in a very pos­i­tive eco­nomic impact on the host communities.

 

For exam­ple, Titanic, the arti­fact exhi­bi­tion hosted by the Royal British Colum­bia Museum in 2007, was vis­ited by more than 450,000 vis­i­tors in a six-month period, 26% of them from out­side the region. The exhi­bi­tion gen­er­ated more than $30 mil­lion in eco­nomic activ­ity and more than 742 full-time jobs in south­ern B.C., out on Van­cou­ver Island.

This act has per­mit­ted the indem­ni­fi­ca­tion of major exhi­bi­tions for over 12 years in Canada, and it has been a com­plete suc­cess. There has never been a sin­gle claim against this pro­gram due to the high stan­dards of muse­ums. The pro­gram has min­i­mal oper­at­ing costs, and the eco­nomic activ­ity gen­er­ated by major exhi­bi­tions in fact results in a net gain of $15 mil­lion in tax rev­enues. In a phrase, this is a win-win scenario.

 

With the pro­posed increases from total cov­er­age of $1.5 bil­lion to $3 bil­lion at any one time, which is a very impor­tant amend­ment that’s included before you, and a new cap on the amount of cov­er­age per exhi­bi­tion, exhi­bi­tions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Picasso: Mas­ter­pieces, which is val­ued at $1.27 bil­lion, can be viewed by a large num­ber of Cana­di­ans and gen­er­ate eco­nomic impact.

 

The pro­posed amend­ments, how­ever, will not solve all of the issues fac­ing exhi­bi­tions, and will not cover all exhi­bi­tions in Canada, but will more than dou­ble the impact from this pro­gram. Given the increases in the val­u­a­tions of art and objects, this will lift an impor­tant road­block that has pre­vented a num­ber of exhi­bi­tions from being cov­ered. We urge your speedy con­sid­er­a­tion of these amendments.

 

In addi­tion, we would like sug­gest that a pro­gram review be under­taken of the effec­tive­ness of this pro­gram in two years’ time with a view to bring­ing this pro­gram in line with inter­na­tional stan­dards. Most nations have unlim­ited indem­ni­fi­ca­tion pro­grams in their nations that are based on the eli­gi­bil­ity of the exhibit rather than the finan­cial value. Such a mea­sure would improve plan­ning, increase the num­ber of exhi­bi­tions pre­sented, and have a pos­i­tive eco­nomic, edu­ca­tional, and social impact for all Canadians.

Muse­ums and the Young Canada Works Program

Hon. Scott Bri­son:

…I want to start off with the issue of youth unem­ploy­ment. We have an issue now where this year we have seen the worst youth employ­ment num­bers in ten years, so pre-dating the down­turn. I’d appre­ci­ate input from the museum sec­tor and the cul­tural sec­tor as to the demo­graphic of the peo­ple in the cul­tural and museum sec­tors, as an exam­ple. Is it accu­rate to assume that there is a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple in your sectors?

 

Mr. John McAvity:

 

No. We oper­ate, on behalf of the Gov­ern­ment of Canada, what is called YCW, Young Canada Works Her­itage. That is a pro­gram of about $7 mil­lion. It funds a lot of young people.

 

What it also pro­vides is qual­ity jobs. These are not mow­ing lawns kinds of jobs. These are research jobs, jobs in tech­nol­ogy, in pub­lic rela­tions, and all kinds of dif­fer­ent areas. In the sta­tis­tics and the eval­u­a­tion that we have done, we have seen that it has pro­vided a great oppor­tu­nity to young peo­ple. They have secured employ­ment after­wards and gone on to greater, bet­ter things.

 

Hon. Scott Bri­son:

My point is that there are oppor­tu­ni­ties, so perhaps–

 

Mr. John McAvity:

There are oppor­tu­ni­ties. How­ever, that pro­gram is greatly oversubscribed.