THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, December 8, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met with videoconference this day at 5:02 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the strengthening of federal institutions’ arts, culture and heritage responsibilities in official language minority communities and in Canada; and, in camera, to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to official languages generally.
Senator Rose-May Poirier (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, before we begin, I ask all senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Please make sure to keep your earpieces away from all microphones at all times. Do not touch the microphones. Activation and deactivation will be managed by the console operators.
Finally, please avoid handling your earpiece while your microphone is on. Earpieces should either remain on the ear or be placed on the designated sticker at each seat. Thank you all for your cooperation.
[Translation]
My name is Rose-May Poirier, I’m a senator and the deputy chair of the committee, and I’m from New Brunswick. Our chair is on his way, but his flight was relayed so he’ll arrive in a little while.
[English]
I’d like to ask my colleagues now to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba from Quebec.
Senator Moncion: Good evening. Lucie Moncion from Ontario.
Senator Cormier: René Cormier from New Brunswick.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I would also like to welcome our witnesses today. We greatly appreciate their being here. In the first hour of our meeting, pursuant to the order of reference received from the Senate on October 29, we are continuing to study the strengthening of federal institutions’ arts, culture and heritage responsibilities in official language minority communities in Canada.
We are pleased to welcome today, from the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, Matthew Farfan, Executive Director; and Grant Myers, Past President; from the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec, Rebecca West, Executive Director, and Jennifer Varkonyi, Member of the Board of Directors; and from the Quebec English-Language Production Council, Kirwan Cox, Executive Director, and Stéphane Moraille, Member of the Board of Directors.
Welcome. It’s nice to see you. We will have five minutes for each person’s presentation, followed by five minutes for questions from senators and to give the answers.
We will start with Matthew Farfan.
Matthew Farfan, Executive Director, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network: Thank you very much, senators. It’s a great pleasure for us to be here with you today, my colleague Grant Myers and me. We really appreciate the invitation.
I will give you a little background about the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, or QAHN. We were founded in 2000 by a gathering of English-speaking heritage volunteers. We are a non-profit, non-partisan province-wide organization engaged with our members in the promotion of the history, heritage and culture of Quebec’s English-speaking communities. We strive to advance the knowledge of those communities by connecting people through our activities and services, thereby contributing to the vitality of Quebec’s official language minority community.
Membership in the organization is open to individuals, families and organizations, regardless of linguistic or cultural affiliation. Currently, we have over 125 museums, local historical societies and other historical or heritage groups that are institutional members. A big part of what QAHN does revolves around strengthening our institutional members, those grassroots organizations that work so hard to preserve our community’s legacy within Quebec and Canada.
QAHN receives core funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, for which we are very grateful. We also currently receive project funding from the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d’expression anglaise. Additional support comes from private foundations, members and self-generated revenue.
This year, in 2025, we celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary. Over the course of this milestone year, we’ve hosted all kinds of events. These have included our twenty-fifth anniversary awards ceremony in Montreal where we launched a new Young Heritage Leaders award and an Indigenous Cultural Awareness Retreat, which was recently held in the Gaspé. Those are just two examples. In November, we hosted an online Heritage Summit. Over 100 people across Quebec registered. This was the first event of its kind.
QAHN prides itself on the quality of its programming. Whether with our print publications, such as the quarterly magazine Quebec Heritage News, which circulates across Quebec and Canada, the events we host with partners around Quebec, our conferences, our websites, our documentary films or our ongoing efforts to advocate for threatened historic sites, we strive to set a high standard. We are proud of the services we provide to our institutional members. Among others, these include assistance with publicity, advice and, perhaps most importantly, training.
For the past 25 years, we have offered free mentorship and capacity-building workshops and resource materials, including a catalogue of no fewer than 35 handbooks, to heritage-sector workers and volunteers. Whether it is a one-off conference or an entire training program centred on a single theme, we have done it. Our offerings have focused on everything from fundraising techniques to improving security at local museums, attracting volunteers, communication, marketing skills in the digital age and so on. Some of our most recent programs have focused specifically on increasing digital capacity.
Grant Myers, Past President, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network: The COVID pandemic had major consequences for many of QAHN’s member institutions. Lacking expertise in digital media, many groups effectively ceased public programming for nearly two years.
In 2020, QAHN quickly integrated video conferencing with popular livestreaming platforms such as Facebook and YouTube and leveraged our own digital media capacity to increase our programming and outreach. Since 2020, we have produced over 125 online and hybrid events, including musical heritage performances, an annual lecture series, over two dozen short documentary films, heritage fairs, symposia and other events. These activities have greatly expanded our reach, and Quebec’s diverse English-speaking heritage has never been so visible.
Through much of our programming, we have sought to empower our member groups. We have done this by co-producing online events with our members, which means that our staff and volunteers work tirelessly to produce professional digital, online programming and content. These experiences inspired us to lead a 15-month Digital Heritage Mentorship Project in 2022 and 2023. Digital skills mentorship by QAHN continues to this day. For the past three years, we have been providing free in-person training through our Quebec-funded — but soon to come to an end — Mentorship and Training for Community Heritage, our MATCH project, with over a dozen English-language heritage groups receiving training in digital techniques.
To conclude, the federal government investments in training and capacity building in all its forms for Quebec’s English-language community represent a critical component of our minority-language vitality. This is true of the many skills-enhancing programs we have outlined, but the continuation of federal investments in these programs is probably most essential in the area of digital media and technology.
Furthermore, in our view, official language minority community, or OLMC, development must take a “by and for” approach. This approach, along with a commitment by the federal government to directly fund and support the development within Quebec’s OLMC, without the intervention of the Government of Quebec, is critical. This should be a key element of Canada’s next Action Plan for Official Languages, due for adoption in 2028.
Thank you for your time.
[Translation]
Rebecca West, Executive Director, Association of English-Language Publishers of Quebec: Madam Deputy Chair, members of the committee, good evening.
My name is Rebecca West and I am the Executive Director of the Association of English-Language Publishers of Quebec, also known as AELAQ, both in French an in English.
I grew up in an English-speaking family in Montreal. My Ontario-born parents insisted that I learn French starting in kindergarten, during the years of Bill 101. I studied at HEC Montréal, worked mainly in French, and am a proud Quebecer.
Today, however, I must defend my mother tongue and the English-speaking community, which make Quebec culturally unique.
[English]
Thank you for inviting AELAQ to testify on strengthening federal support for official language minority communities. I’m joined today by Jennifer Varkonyi, AELAQ’s board member who has vast experience in Quebec’s English-language publishing sector, currently with Véhicule Press and Maisonneuve magazine.
AELAQ represents 30 English-language publishers in Quebec. We are a double minority, a linguistic minority within Quebec’s francophone-majority province, competing against multinational dominance in Canada’s English-language book market where Canadian-owned publishers hold just 5% of the market share, compared to 54% of the French-language market.
The financial crisis facing our industry is urgent. Industry data from 2024 shows 50% of Canadian literary publishers rate their financial health as “worrying” or “dire,” with 10% considering closing.
In spite of this, our member publishers demonstrate rich national and international impact. One of our members, Drawn & Quarterly, published Kate Beaton’s Ducks, which won Canada Reads in 2023 and was named a New York Times Notable Book. Véhicule Press published Valérie Bah’s Subterrane, which won the 2025 Amazon Canada First Novel Award with a $60,000 prize.
These successes are just examples from a number of our member publishers, but they show what’s possible with federal partnership.
AELAQ itself is dependent on grants for 80% of our funding. However, in a recent survey of our members, over 90% of respondents expressed moderate to high concern about both government funding — or a lack thereof — and grant accessibility.
Jennifer Varkonyi, Member of the Board of Directors, Association of English-Language Publishers of Quebec: My name is Jennifer Varkonyi, and I’m a board member of AELAQ, currently working with Véhicule Press. Separately, I also work for Maisonneuve magazine, based in Montreal.
I’ve witnessed the challenges facing English-language publishers in Quebec first-hand for over two decades.
Our publishers work productively with Quebec’s French-language publishing industry. Our partnership with ANEL, l’Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, among others, demonstrates how English-language publishers serve as cultural mediators through translation and shared cultural infrastructure. We’re not merely a marginalized group seeking assistance. We’re connective tissue between Canada’s official language communities. But we need specific federal action aligned with this committee’s mandate.
First, increase funding for the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Canada Book Fund’s budget hasn’t seen a permanent increase since 2001, eroding real value by more than 68%. Industry data shows only two new publishers have joined the Canada Council’s core funding program this decade.
Federal support must also address professional development gaps, particularly digital skills training for discoverability, e-commerce and accessible format production. Small independent, mission-driven publishers cannot absorb inflation without federal partnership. We urge permanent increases that recognize our role in official language minority vitality.
Second, amend the Copyright Act. Educational fair dealing has cost Canadian publishers $250 million in licensing revenue since 2012. We also urgently need AI regulations protecting Canadian literary works. Copyright is designed to be an opt-in system requiring explicit permission from rights holders. Transparency requirements must ensure AI developers disclose which works are being used in training data sets. We need protections against unauthorized use in training and output. This isn’t abstract. It’s direct revenue that is lost that we could be using to fund the editing, translation and cultural mediation work Rebecca described. We need protections ensuring creators receive fair compensation.
Third, defend English-language community rights in Quebec. Bill 96 creates compounding operational pressures: increased compliance costs, institutional communication constraints and accelerated need for digital transformation to reach readers beyond traditional channels.
Bill C-13’s references to Quebec’s Charter of the French Language in federal law create unprecedented policy alignment that marginalizes English-language cultural organizations. Federal support must recognize that we face triple pressure: multinational market dominance, provincial language legislation and funding constraints.
Federal support determines whether English-language publishers in Quebec can sustain operations, develop capacity and strengthen cultural connections between official language communities over the long term.
Thank you. We welcome your questions.
Kirwan Cox, Executive Director, Quebec English-Language Production Council: As you know, my name is Kirwan Cox and I’m the Executive Director of the Quebec English-Language Production Council, or QEPC. We represent the official language minority film and TV production industry in Quebec. I am accompanied online by Stéphane Moraille, a member of the board of the QEPC, who will conclude our presentation.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak before this Senate committee today about the challenges facing the official language minority production industry in Quebec. Our cultural sovereignty and our stories have never been under greater threat than they are now, our defences never weaker.
Ninety-four per cent of Canadian internet advertising goes to foreign platforms. It sounds similar to your number. In constant dollars, the CBC is a pale shadow of its former self. For example, we see a recent drop of more than 50% in its documentary licences. Kids’ TV and drama series are under similar pressure. This requires greater foreign funding at the expense of our stories in order to be able to produce them.
To encourage production funding from American companies, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, promotes what appears to be “branch-plant CanCon,” a contradiction in terms that, in our opinion, will not lead to Canadian stories or Canadian control of our market.
And what about the official language minority in Quebec? The Quebec government continues to ignore or take hostile action against its anglophone population. The English film tax credit is lower than the French tax credit and is not competitive with other provinces. This encourages producers to leave Quebec. Quebec’s share of English-language production in Canada has fallen from 25% to less than 5%. The last time I was here it was over 6%. As you can see, there’s no stopping momentum.
These jobs are needed in Quebec. A new study has found the unemployment rate for anglophones in Quebec is 37% higher than it is for francophones. This represents a loss of $1.5 billion to the economy of Quebec. QEPC members alone represent over $200 million of this amount. The OLMC industry is in crisis. Our existence, much less our vitality, is at stake. What can your committee do to help us?
We have asked the Department of Canadian Heritage, or PCH, to give us substantive equality with the French minority. That means changing the PCH-Canada Media Fund contribution agreement. In this agreement, the French minority is guaranteed a minimum of 10% of the Canada Media Fund’s French envelope. We have requested 10% of the English envelope; PCH has refused. Heritage has signed a collaboration agreement with the French minority. We have requested the same; PCH has refused.
Unlike French minority production, English minority production is frequently produced by non-OLMC Quebec producers. We have suggested that the CRTC change its OLMC definition to solve this problem. So far, the commission has refused. By the way, I hope you read our footnotes carefully because we put a lot of energy into our footnotes. They’re very small but have links and all kinds of details.
Stéphane Moraille, Member of the Board, Quebec English-Language Production Council: As you see, economically, it’s huge, but the deeper loss is intangible and precious.
Every project that goes unproduced, every producer who leaves the province, every child who grows up without seeing themselves reflected in stories — these are losses to who we are. Stories teach what’s possible. They show us who we are, who we’ve been, who we might become. They create space to understand and belong. Without the tools to tell our stories in the dominant medium of our time, we become consumers of another imagination.
Canada has made a choice about what kind of country we want to be. We’ve chosen to be a bilingual nation, to celebrate and protect difference, to ensure that linguistic minorities can flourish, not just survive. We even wish to host the Francophonie summit. This is our DNA, and we’re not the fifty-first anything.
Right now, the digital landscape is flattening, erasing cultural diversity. English-speaking communities in Quebec are watching American culture because of the way the streaming ecosystem dominates. An essential component of copyright is fixation. If you don’t follow, understand and manage the way works are fixated and distributed, copyright becomes unusable.
If the cultural sector that represents this community doesn’t have the perennial means to increase digital literacy in the streaming industry, how are we doing to endure? If English-speaking people have to leave the province to work — and they are leaving — or can’t make a living, what do we need official language protections for? We would be protecting an empty space.
If we say we value diversity in culture and that we want to protect linguistic minorities, but we don’t fix the conditions where minorities must leave, where their children grow up consuming another nation’s culture, where their imaginations, their minds — I’m thinking of my son right now — are shaped by market forces, are we really about the values we claim, especially when we know that the wealth of tomorrow is imagination and innovation?
This is not a test; it’s not policy. This is the moment. It’s about who we are and who we want to be. Thank you so much for having us.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cox and Ms. Moraille. We will now proceed to questions from the senators.
As you know, we are suggesting for the first round, as we do every week, that we allow five minutes, including questions and answers. If time permits, we will then proceed to additional rounds after that.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome everyone. Witnesses have confirmed that francophone minority communities have a formal agreement with Telefilm Canada. This agreement guarantees a minimum level of investment in independent production.
Do anglophone minority communities have a similar agreement with Telefim Canada?
[English]
Mr. Cox: Yes, we do. The idea of a collaboration agreement for the English-minority film industry started in 2015 with the National Film Board, which did the first one. That became a model.
We’ve been negotiating with Telefilm for approximately seven years. It was when Julie Roy, their new Executive Director, took over from the National Film Board — she came from the National Film Board, so she knew that a collaboration agreement wasn’t scary. She said, “Okay, we have to do it for both the French and the English.”
We now have, hopefully, a guarantee of 5% of the English production funding, and they have, I believe, the same amount.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Are you equipped to make your needs known to the digital platforms that you mentioned? You already have some partnerships in place. You’ve integrated with the Amazons of this world. Are you equipped to collaborate with Netflix? With regard to anglophone minority communities, particularly in Quebec, what would need to be done to improve access to local productions like yours on Netflix?
[English]
Mr. Cox: Netflix, as you may know, is involved in a lawsuit against the CRTC and against the Canadian government. Therefore, until that lawsuit is settled, we’re not quite sure how much power we have to do anything.
In terms of our feeling about what we have, we’re missing the key point, which is that Canadian Heritage provides funding to the Canada Media Fund, and they have guaranteed a minimum amount of that funding going to official language minority French production. We don’t have such a guarantee, and Heritage has said they won’t give that to us.
I should probably mention that we have filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Official Languages, and we’re taking Heritage to mediation, asking them to change their minds. But we’re also here because Heritage has proven very stubborn. We’re hoping that your report will also provide additional pressure that we need to be treated similarly — not the same but similarly — to the French minority so that we have the funding in order to keep English-language producers here.
The other thing that I’ll just mention in passing is that, unlike the French minority, most of the production that is funded under the official language minority legislation in Quebec at the federal level goes to non-official-language-minority producers, meaning French producers who are doing English-language programming. We have a competition for the right to be able to access official language minority funding, which the francophones outside of Quebec do not face. I just mention that in passing.
Senator Cormier: Thank you and welcome. I will ask you questions around the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028. What kind of contributions do you have from that action plan? I want to know more specifically whether the next government-wide official languages strategy should apply to all institutions that play a role in arts and culture. Because it doesn’t apply to all departments and all that. Who would like to answer that?
I want to be clear. This is a cliché, but we have a tendency to put all anglophones in the same pot with the same issues. Here, we want to understand more specifically the issues for the English minority in Quebec. In terms of the action plan, do you receive money from the action plan? Are you happy with the money you receive? Do they take into consideration your realities in terms of criteria? Should the next action plan include more departments or more partners, I would say?
Ms. West: I will quickly answer your first question. As an association, no, we don’t receive funding specifically following this legislation. The key funding questions we are concerned about were mentioned in our opening statement. Could the committee include in its report that the Canada Book Fund really hasn’t seen any permanent increase in over 20 years? It simply has not kept up with costs.
Senator Cormier: What percentage do you receive from that fund specifically?
Ms. West: As an association, we are 80% grant-funded and, of that, the Canada Book Fund — I couldn’t tell you exactly off the top of my head, but I would say we are funded at every level. The Canada Book Fund, SODEC, Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the Canada Book Fund is our leading funder. We have seen modest increases in our association funding over the years but are still working with staff —
Senator Cormier: But in terms of your members, you have 30 —
Ms. West: Of course. Maybe Jennifer could speak more specifically —
Senator Cormier: Yes, okay. I would like to know about your members, actually.
Ms. Varkonyi: Certainly. As a publisher based in Quebec, the Canada Book Fund is a very important funder for my press specifically. It represents about 15% to 20% of Véhicule Press’s overall revenue. But I think several member publishers at the AELAQ actually do not receive funding from the Canada Book Fund. There are some significant barriers to access for very small publishers in Quebec, as you can imagine. It’s difficult to produce several numbers of publications every year when you’re starting out, when you’re very small, when you don’t have access to funding.
For many of the small publishers, it’s important to have access to grants and funding for emerging publishers and micro-grants, on which the Canada Council has been doing some good work in trying to broaden their accessibility for small and new publishers. I do think it’s incredibly important, but it’s not enough. There are still too many publishers who are producing their own work completely on their own steam and, frankly, operating at a loss, going into debt personally to make sure that their books are being produced.
It’s also extremely challenging on the provincial level because the Quebec government’s priorities, very rightly, want to encourage and foster the French cultural milieu. But some things are much more easily accomplished for French publishers, such as becoming an éditeur agréé to become a recipient of SODEC funding. It’s very challenging for some English-language minority publishers in Quebec, mainly because the threshold to become an éditeur agréé, for example, is that you must publish six books in one year by Québécois writers. Most of our publishers’ mandates are to support the English-language community in Quebec, of course, but sometimes they are working with authors who might be located outside of Quebec. Just to meet that minimum threshold is very challenging. Oftentimes, they are working without access to funding altogether.
Senator Moncion: You mentioned a couple of things, Ms. Varkonyi, about the challenges. You talked about the funding envelope that hasn’t changed since 2001, but you also talked about Bill C-13, which marginalized your group. Could you explain a little bit more how the Charter of the French Language hindered your ability to maybe expand or do more work in Quebec?
Ms. Varkonyi: I just want to start out by saying that, as English-language publishers based in Quebec, we are like —
[Translation]
We’re proud to be able to speak French and work in French.
[English]
We value the French language very much, and we think its protection is extremely important. The one point we want to highlight is that it does impose some operational constraints about having to function formally and officially in French. We’re very small organizations. We often have two or three staff members, not to mention that the artists and writers with whom we’re working, their mother tongue and often their language of comfort in communication is English, so there are certain constraints. We just want to ensure that the English-language minority community isn’t completely hampered by the very real need to protect French. I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive.
There are also questions of having to translate documents or internal controls to comply with the Charter of the French Language. When we’re struggling to keep the lights on, we want to make sure that our funding is there to help us adapt to these changes so we can be an excellent player in our Québécois communities, but we don’t want to leave our artists and our writers outside and out in the cold either.
Senator Moncion: You also mentioned amending the copyright law. Can you expand a little bit on that one? It might be you, Ms. West, who talked about that.
Ms. West: Sure, yes. I’m by no means a copyright expert, but certainly the copyright legislation as it stands right now has cost the publishing industry across Canada millions of dollars in lost revenue, primarily from institutional educational sales, which simply are no longer there. That is why we’re advocating for change. The Canadian copyright example is held up internationally in places like the international publishing associations as an example of what not to do to keep the industry thriving and continuing on.
Senator Moncion: This is one of the areas that I think the government is working on right now. Have you looked at the legislation that is being brought forward, and is it okay? Is that going to help?
Ms. West: I personally couldn’t say that I’m up to date on the latest news in terms of where it is today. I certainly know, with our partners at the Association of Canadian Publishers and in our lobbying efforts, for years we’ve been pressing for this, but nothing seems to come to fruition, which is why we bring it up again today.
Senator Moncion: I understand. The question is more about whether you have some legal people who are working with you on that legislation.
Ms. West: We don’t have the funds for legal counsel. We wish we did. That’s where working with like-minded partners, whether it’s the Association of Canadian Publishers or even our French-language counterparts, l’Association nationale des éditeurs de livres, who are fighting for similar issues, especially with compounding these challenges, everything that’s going on on the AI front.
Senator Moncion: Are you in contact with them to make sure that they are looking out for you?
Ms. West: We work regularly with ANEL. They do have in-house counsel, Stéphanie Hénault, who is working almost exclusively on this issue. We provided professional development sessions in recent years in partnership with ANEL specifically on this issue, yes.
Senator Moncion: Mr. Farfan and Mr. Myers, you talked about the social media training and the positives that it has brought for the people you’ve been training over the years, but you also said you’re out of funds to keep on doing the training, or did I hear you incorrectly?
Mr. Farfan: It’s a regular part of our training to offer mentorship in digital media in all of its forms, including social media. We’re a member-based organization. We have 125-130 institutional members. It’s part of what we do. Our raison d’être is really our institutional members. We always have it front of mind how we can best help these members improve the services in their communications. Obviously, a big part of that is social media, livestreaming.
During COVID, many organizations basically flatlined in terms of what they could produce online. Everyone was trying to catch up. It was really a quick pivot. We were fortunate. We had good staff and the resources to do it. We had great support from Canadian Heritage with our Digital Heritage Mentorship Project and subsequent funding that came to us, which we were able to use to directly benefit dozens of historical groups across Quebec and many small communities. They gained that experience through direct training, and they were able to put it into practice. It was actually getting the training, the handbooks, and then practising and then putting their productions online to the public, so reaching a huge audience. It’s a big part of what we do.
Senator Moncion: And the people who have used that technology are still out there and they’re still doing well?
Mr. Farfan: They are thriving. Their capacity is a lot better than it was just a few years ago. We are constantly getting feedback and asking what we can we do, what is most required.
We have a current training program. It’s called MATCH, and it’s all about offering training in the areas that are most needed by our member organizations. So if it’s livestreaming, then we will send a trainer, and it’s entirely covered, whatever it is. Thank you.
Mr. Myers: It’s an excellent example of what we were talking about, the “by and for” approach. Support from the Government of Canada is enabling us to help ourselves. That’s really important.
We have everything we need from the perspective of our community to chart our own path. What we need from the Government of Canada is ongoing support to be able to do that.
I hope this isn’t too blunt, but we feel constantly under attack from the Government of Quebec that, again, supports us on one hand, and then, on the other hand, introduces legislation that has moved from the public sphere into the private sphere. Now they are beginning to try and govern the use of minority languages in that sphere. That threatens our ability to communicate among ourselves as private citizens in the English language. So support — like the ability of the Government of Canada to provide us with core funding and to provide us with the ability to tell our own stories on our own terms — is vital.
[Translation]
Senator Osler: I’ll ask my question in English.
[English]
It’s a broad question, and I might invite each group to comment on it. It’s a question on artificial intelligence, or AI. Society is having conversations about it. Governments are having conversations about it. Certainly, the Senate is having conversations about AI.
Currently, how is AI promoting cultural and linguistic diversity and expression in Quebec? What is or would be needed for AI to fully benefit Quebec’s English-speaking communities?
Mr. Cox: ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, is a union of actors and other people too, stunt people, for example, and they are freaking out about AI because they see it as a way of having their entire 3,500 membership in Quebec finished. So every time I talk to them, they say, “Only our stunt people are working,” and then they tell me, “Actually, our stunt people are no longer working because the American service production is not coming here for whatever reason, and Canadian content is not strong.”
On the other hand, some of our producer members say, “Great, we don’t have to pay as much money to all those nasty people at ACTRA,” so, as you can imagine, there are some interesting conversations. I would like to ask Stéphane Moraille if she has anything she would like to add about this.
Ms. Moraille: Unfortunately, I don’t.
Mr. Cox: Stéphane doesn’t have anything to add.
Senator Osler: We are seeing fully AI singers, and I’m certain there are probably fully AI actors. What would you say should be in place in terms of using it for its full benefit? Are there guardrails that you would like to see in place as well?
Mr. Cox: Yes, there are guardrails. What I would like to do, though, is consult more directly with my members and get back to you if you don’t mind.
Senator Osler: Thank you.
Ms. Moraille: I would add that the guiding principle for AI would always be to make sure that the human is in the loop. There are ways to construct, because every time there is a new advancement in technology, we go around. We do this very strange dance where we first see the impact that it has on the cultural sector. Then we organize to speak to the people who have decisional powers to explain to them what the impacts are. And then after that, we look to the courts to decide whether or not the conflict is correct or not. This takes years.
We don’t have the time with AI anymore. We’ve seen this basically with the MP3. It was a dress rehearsal for all of this, and we’ve seen the devastating effects it had in the music industry, and it caught up into the audiovisual sector. Now with AI, we simply cannot afford to have all these discussions and then look to the courts and decide. It’s just not going to work. A year from now, AI is going to be different.
Right now, the biggest problem in this cultural sector is it doesn’t have the resources to keep a watchful eye on the digital knowledge it needs to survive in the streaming industry. The same applies to AI. There are ways to ensure that the business model takes care of all the people who are involved without having them disappear. It’s just that we need the resources, and we need the copyright to work, and with technological means, so this means implementing knowledge and capacities.
Senator Osler: Perhaps consider as well that it is both a threat and an opportunity, but how do you turn the threat into an opportunity?
Ms. West: I’m by no means an AI expert in a very fast-moving industry. I will refer to a few notes if you don’t mind.
One of the huge problems from the authors’ and publishers’ perspective is that all of these works are being used to train language models. They’re being used even when you do something as simple as Google a recipe. You might get an AI answer that has been fed in some part by the works of our authors, which is crazy.
We’re looking for transparency around training data sets so that developers have to disclose which works have been used and are continuing to be used without permission. We see it as a form of value extraction without any compensation to the publishers or authors right now. We’re advocating for an opt-in system where rights holders grant explicit permission, which has not been the case so far.
Jennifer, do you have anything you would like to add?
Ms. Varkonyi: Yes, the copyright issue is a very large one. The fact that works are being used without any permission and even just acknowledgement is shocking. It truly is. Compensation is one thing. It’s hard to quantify how you would compensate in that realm, but the lack of acknowledgement of the works that are being used is really troubling.
I will admit I struggle as a publisher, and knowing several writers and artists and translators who are working in creative fields, I find it hard to see tangible opportunities to aid our sector, frankly. The best you could say is perhaps it can help you with some administrative aspects of your work as an artist, which are heavy for small organizations that are running on very small teams. Maybe asking for some boilerplate documents is one thing you can ask from AI, but outside of that, when you’re producing in a creative field, AI is mostly a threat.
It’s troubling to think that there isn’t going to be enough distinction made between something that is truly fully human made, made by artists in your community, for your community, versus something that is an amalgamation of millions and millions of works and other things, creating something that people aren’t necessarily going to know where it’s coming from, what has fed it, ultimately. Unfortunately, it’s mostly a threat that we feel is difficult for our industry to deal with, frankly.
Ms. Moraille: For a long time, the cultural sector relied on the common good when those new technological advancements decided there is new money being made in this new sector and then a little portion of it went to be redistributed to the creators, to the people who made this possible. It worked for a very long time. Now, with the Online Streaming Act, we see that it isn’t.
I would say the same thing is happening with AI. There are ways for us to preserve the common good and foster innovation and incentivize creators to keep creating in a new landscape. It’s just that, as I mentioned before, it takes a long time for us to react, and we just can’t afford the time anymore.
Mr. Farfan: It seems as if we’re all chasing after a runaway train. We’re trying to figure AI out. The heritage sector, I think, has a lot in common with literature in general, publishing. How authentic is that Google search? The material that comes up, how trustworthy is it? It’s not sourced. There is a wide range of opinions about AI, ranging from total distrust to people thinking it’s the best thing that has ever happened. It’s your personal secretary. This can help you with all those mundane tasks that, I think, someone else referred to. But there is also the ethical side to it.
We are currently putting together, hopefully for the new year, a major training session for the institutions that work in the heritage sector in English-speaking Quebec on how to navigate AI, how to best use it as a tool or an opportunity, but also to be healthily skeptical, because you do have to question it and the sources, where it comes from.
There is a question of creativity. We all like to think, as human beings, that we have agency and that we’re not going to lose that. It’s a question of philosophy, I guess. We’re figuring it out as we go, and we’re chasing after this train.
The Deputy Chair: I have a couple of questions before I go to the second round. My first question is a follow-up with Mr. Cox.
You said in your comments that you had made a request for the percentage you were getting to be up to 10%, like the other amounts the francophone side was getting, if I understood correctly. If I understood correctly, you said you were refused. Are you getting any percentage? If yes, how much?
Mr. Cox: The French minority has been getting 10% of the French envelope, which is about $100 million. They’ve had a foundation of $10 million to build on going back 15 years or more. Now they’re up to about $18 million. This is from all Canada Media Fund sources. They have done a tremendous job of building on that base.
We, on the other hand, have been up and down, all over the place. Ten per cent of the English envelope would be about $20 million. It would be double what the French have. However, as I said, there is a lot of competition inside of Quebec in English-language production between English-language producers and French-language producers, so we don’t have access to the entire market. That’s one issue.
The other issue that I should probably point out is that with the lack of a firm base, what we have ended up with is a percentage that goes down, recently to 4% of the entire CMF financial system, and up, maybe, to 15% or 16%. So we are going up and down like that. They have built and are going in a very positive direction because they had a platform.
The Deputy Chair: Does it change yearly?
Mr. Cox: Yes. The Minister of Canadian Heritage signs an agreement called the contribution agreement with CMF every year, and it is pretty much the same every year.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. My next question is for any of the witnesses who would like to answer.
In your opinion, has the consultation process with the federal institutions with respect to arts, culture and heritage improved since the modernization of the Official Languages Act, and do you believe that the government gives you support during these consultations? If yes, can you give us some suggestions? If not, can you give us some suggestions on how that can be improved?
Ms. West: I can’t think of a specific instance where our association has been consulted. I have only been with the association for five years, but I think maybe a more direct outreach to the publishing community for input would be an improvement.
The Deputy Chair: Does anyone else have any comment?
Mr. Farfan: We’ve been consulted a number of times by the Department of Canadian Heritage about the action plan and the funding process. I think their view is that they want to streamline it and make the application and reporting process better, so we’re always appreciative of that. We have absolutely no complaints in that area.
The Deputy Chair: Since the modernization of the Official Languages Act, do you feel the practices of the federal institutions have changed in terms of promoting the presence of art, culture and heritage institutions?
Mr. Farfan: I don’t know that it’s connected to the modernization of the Official Languages Act per se.
Mr. Cox: We’ve noticed a change in a number of the major federal institutions we deal with in terms of consultation. They’re more interested in consulting with us, and that is apparently a result of Bill C-11 and Bill C-13. However, so far, it hasn’t been a substantive change. It has been more of a peripheral change. Maybe it’s because in two years we’re trying to push them too hard, and they need 10 or 20 years to move. Frankly, we would like them to move a lot faster toward substantive change.
The CRTC has been thinking about how to deal with the official language minority since October 2023, when both the English and French minorities asked them to reorganize the way they consult with us. They had a public hearing, which was 2024-202, I believe, and we’re still waiting for an answer. When it comes to the definition of Canadian content, they recently gave a decision, 2025-299, and we were left out of it. They say there’s going to be a subsequent decision, but we were left out. I don’t think that was necessary.
We have to push everybody all the time, and it’s like Sisyphus going uphill. We have to ask for mediation or go to the Commissioner of Official Languages and so on and so forth. We haven’t been able to see the kind of substantive difference that we were hoping for.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Myers, do you have something to add?
Mr. Myers: I hope this answer isn’t too broad. When the Government of Canada consulted with the English-speaking community in Quebec about the modernization of the act, I was able to participate in that on a couple of occasions. I was hearing that the challenges that the francophone communities are facing and the challenges that the English-speaking minority are facing are not exactly the same. Somehow, that was translated into an act that is asymmetrical not only in terms of recognizing those challenges but in the emphasis on the communities. We ended up with an act that, by and large, appears, at least on paper, to be focused on the vitality — at least when you look at where the emphasis is — of the francophone minority in Canada.
Again, I want to say what many of my colleagues have said: That’s okay. When I speak to my colleagues across the country, the francophone minority does have challenges, and those challenges absolutely need to be addressed. We worry, however, that the OLMC within Quebec is not prominent enough in the act, and that leaves us vulnerable.
We’ve seen in some cases very good consultation, and in other cases not enough. We worry that asymmetry will make us vulnerable in the future in terms of consultation with our community and the Government of Canada’s ability to respond to the needs of our communities. Again, I hope that wasn’t too broad, excuse me.
The Deputy Chair: No, thank you. It was good. We’ll go to second round.
Senator Cormier: We spoke a lot about AI. We speak all the time about Amazon, but we still have people who read books. We still have people who go to film festivals. We still have people who go to museums.
What would be your priorities for the federal government? What should the federal government do more or better to make sure that we continue reading your books and watching your films?
[Translation]
What would you say are the priorities for your sectors, in as concrete terms as possible? What would be your most important recommendations for the federal government to support your sectors, given AI, the presence of Amazon, the e-market, and all that? This question is open to anyone who wants to respond.
Ms. Varkonyi: We’ve said it time and time again, but it all comes down to investment in the sector.
[English]
It’s federal funding for the sector, for book publishers, for sure.
Senator Cormier: I’m talking about markets, audiences and all of that.
Ms. Varkonyi: Yes. A lot of our core funding does require that we talk a lot about the audience development that we’re doing. There are some initiatives specifically from the Department of Canadian Heritage that invest in circulation or business development grants. So continuing with those and hopefully increasing funding for opportunities like that are incredibly vital.
Senator Cormier: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you have enough data?
Ms. Varkonyi: On our own buying habits and such?
Senator Cormier: Yes.
Ms. Varkonyi: Yes, we do. We work very closely with our sales teams and also our distributor, who has granular data on booksellers, the books they’re ordering, the physical books. We do have a lot of data that can show there’s demand.
There is incredible competition, as you can imagine. There are even associations like the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association, or CIBA. Partners like that in the publishing world are incredibly important because their mandate is to promote Canadian books and authors for large platforms like Amazon. It’s just incredibly difficult to get them to order your books, but it’s still important for people in remote locations. Not everyone has cities with a plethora of bookstores at their disposal. It’s a fine balance, but supporting funds that can do circulation is great.
Senator Cormier: Mr. Cox?
Mr. Cox: I would say that the problem that is apparent is our loss of cultural sovereignty. In other words, I remember when Netflix — not Netflix so much, but Amazon and all of these companies were all famously being developed in garages somewhere in California. The CRTC — I remember a meeting once — thought, “Okay, we don’t really have to deal with them or worry about them.” Well, you have to worry about them. They’ve taken over. The government is in court with them. If there is not greater control over the future of our cultural sovereignty, we’re not going to have it.
Senator Cormier: We still have great film festivals in Toronto and Montreal. Does the federal government need to support those events more? This is something concrete, in a way.
Mr. Cox: Yes, it needs to support it more. There need to be more partners within the federal system that do the support. There needs to be an action plan that applies to more than talk. Right now, we don’t have anything to do with the action plan for 2023-28. We weren’t asked about it. We don’t deal with it. We don’t get anything from it. We don’t find that the action plan is actually acting.
The point I’m trying to make is that there is money from the general taxpayers through the federal government, and there is money through all of these companies. These companies are fighting to the death to make sure that we don’t have access to any of their money. The Prime Minister took the digital services tax and got rid of it within three days after there was a complaint. I consider that practical, but I don’t know what to do about it, and you probably don’t either, as Mr. Carney is the Prime Minister.
Mr. Farfan: If I could, I would say make sure the money gets to the local, grassroots communities.
We represent local historical and heritage groups. I would point to a current project where we have funding through the federal government. It’s called the SHARE program, Supporting Heritage Awareness, Recognition and Engagement. It allows us, with the help of Canadian Heritage, to distribute microgrants at the local level, so historical groups, small museums, for example. Those are the people who are on the ground and know what their priorities are, whether that’s learning about AI, helping put an exhibition together using AI, building a website, getting training. Whatever their priorities are, we’re able to do that.
We are one of two groups in Quebec that are administering this program. We are doing it for the heritage sector, the other being ELAN, doing it for the arts and culture. This program has been described as a game-changer for many of the recipients —
Senator Cormier: It’s from Canadian Heritage?
Mr. Farfan: Canadian Heritage, yes. It’s over four years, and we’re now in the second year. It’s very successful.
Mr. Myers: I think it’s very important to recognize that we need to continue to support the not-for-profit sector. We also need to recognize, however, that the arts and culture represent an important source of employment for our community. We have to make sure that just because people are involved in the arts and culture sector in a way that makes them money professionally, business owners or working people — we have to make sure the support is there as well.
It’s great that we’re able to celebrate our community and celebrate who we are and tell our stories, but at the end of the day people need to make a living. There’s an economic component we can’t forget about and we need to encourage and support.
Ms. Moraille: We mentioned film festivals. They matter but they don’t drive market outcomes. They build prestige, and there are networks, but you can show your film once at a film festival and you won’t be able to make a living.
Right now, it’s the digital knowledge. This is why it matters for cultural sovereignty. This is a prerequisite to survive. You need to know what the algorithm does. You need to understand that stuff to be able to make a living, and for that you need resources. Otherwise, you risk becoming a digital cultural tenant where all the national industries become dependent on the foreign platforms, on opaque recommendation engines, on U.S.-centric or globalized taste profiles, like external economic frameworks. That’s what becoming a tenant is.
You produce a culture, and then someone else owns the data. That’s what I meant by saying copyright means you have to control the way your content is fixated and distributed. Someone else owns the data underlying your cultural content. Someone else controls the audience, and someone else captures the value and never redistributes the value to make sure you continue producing your culture in the first place.
This is like a waterfall system we’re in where the culture is there, and there’s nice creative content, but the data, the audience and the value are derived elsewhere. This is the opposite of sovereignty.
Digital knowledge allows you — if you can get it, you can understand what audience ownership is. You can create strategic leverage so you can understand who watches what, where, why. This informs your creation, and then the revenue models just follow. You can better argue for your industry. And also cultural visibility, like the metadata, the algorithm, literacy, ensures that national content doesn’t vanish in all the global back catalogues.
To build protection against cultural erosion, we have to, yes, enforce rights, but we have to know how to track uses and evaluate AI training impacts, maintain archives, prevent cultural works that we create — and it’s quite difficult to do so right now for OLMCs in Quebec — from disappearing into digital memory.
This is like a big thing we’re talking about. It takes incremental steps every day.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Gerba: Ms. Moraille raised an important point about data ownership. This is what gives Amazon and other digital companies their strength. Should we understand that a recommendation is needed to protect official language minority culture and artists? Indeed, they should be given the ability to own their data. Do you know of a formula that would achieve this?
[English]
Ms. Moraille: This is the portion of the meeting where we’re going to ring a bell. This is it.
If you’re funding digital capacity for cultural systems, you’re funding culture. This means the investment needs to be perennial, sustainable and recurrent. To be a cultural worker or to express yourself in a language — because earlier we mentioned that your culture has to do with the stories you tell, who you are, how you live, who you want to be — you need to fund digital capacity for cultural ecosystems. This is the prism through which minority language communities see themselves. This means you train creators in data analytics; you invest in national digital platforms or archives; you negotiate mandatory data sharing with global streamers; you incentivize digital discoverability standards; you develop AI-resilient rights frameworks; you foster national digital cultural corridors with diaspora audiences.
You do the things you need to be able to be alive in this new digital era. You don’t wait for a court to decide whether or not Netflix has to pay, or, according to the word of the law and the way broadcasting is defined, and this new streaming, does it constitute a fixation or not? You can’t. You action.
There was an essay written a long time ago — before all the technology became present everywhere — it was entitled “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” It was so important because a lot of people realized these “cathedrals” are being built while all the other people dependent on this new technology lose their rights. So we have to create a “bazaar” where the rights and the data are owned and the cultural digital knowledge is part and parcel of what we do to exist.
Senator Gerba: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: If there are no other questions, I have one myself. Again, my question is to all the witnesses if we have time.
Have you received funding from the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023–2028? If so, do you believe this funding is sufficient to meet the needs of your members? How is the funding divided between your members? Is it project-based?
Mr. Farfan: Yes, we do receive core funding. It has been increased twice in recent years, 12.5% and then the second time for a similar amount. That has made a huge difference in how we are able to operate. It has allowed us to deal with inflation. It compensates for the lack of increase in core funding that was quite long term. That has been a big help. Many of the organizations across Quebec that receive the increase would say the same thing.
Project funding is something that we are currently also receiving. I mentioned the SHARE program, which is a four-year project. Most of it is in and out because it goes out to the community organizations in the heritage sector. Obviously, it takes a bit of work to administer a project that size, so there is a small amount that we use to administer the project. Most of it goes directly to the communities that are telling our stories, and we’re very proud of it.
I guess to answer your question, yes, we receive both types. We can always use more. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Is there anybody else who wants to add something?
Ms. West: Could you repeat the very essence of the question?
The Deputy Chair: Have you received funding from the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028? If so, do you believe the funding is sufficient to meet your needs? How is the funding divided among your members? Is it project-based?
Ms. West: We receive funding as an official language minority association through the Canada Book Fund at the Department of Canadian Heritage. As I mentioned earlier, of all the grants we receive, it is our largest one. It is project-based funding on a two-year contribution-agreement basis, primarily for marketing and promotional activities — such as an annual book fair, which we just held over the weekend, and a long-standing literary review, the Montreal Review of Books, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary recently — and then professional development activities, which, post-pandemic, we’ve been delivering in a conference format.
Is it sufficient? When I started at AELAQ, we were one part-time staff member. There seemed not enough hours in the day to do all of these wonderful projects to promote the great work of our publishers. Today, we’re two part-time staff.
While we’re very grateful for the funding, obviously, if it were core funding, it would allow us to expand and would require less administrative burden in administering and reporting on all of these grants. We could have even more impact as an association to promote and increase — I’ll come back to what I said at the beginning of the meeting. The 95% of sales going to multinationals like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins only keeps growing. If it keeps growing, there will no longer be a Canadian-owned publishing sector.
If there’s one thing you retain today, it’s that cultural sovereignty is publishing our own books, telling our own stories by Canadian-owned companies and Canadian authors. With more stable funding, that’s what we’re here to do, and we hope to continue to do so. Thank you.
Senator Cormier: I’m curious to hear about CBC/Radio-Canada, which is part of recognizing the Official Languages Act. I’m wondering what your relationship with the CBC is. What do you have to say about the importance of CBC? As you know, Radio-Canada and CBC are two different components in a certain way. What’s the reality in Quebec for the English-minority community?
Mr. Cox: English CBC has a huge number of problems. Its audience has been going down much lower than Radio-Canada, which has a language advantage in terms of North America. We feel that there’s not enough production being done in Quebec for CBC. That’s point number one. We would like to see a lot more. CBC claims they don’t have any money, so, therefore, they have trouble.
We waited for the CRTC to give a definition of official language minority producers and production, which they didn’t do. If they had done the definition that we were expecting to strengthen our definition, we would have gone to CBC — which 10 or 15 years ago, English production in Quebec was 12% of the English CBC’s total independent production. Then the CRTC put in a 6% quota. Now it’s 6%. They went down from 12% to 6% to meet the quota, so the quota had the opposite advantage. It was a disadvantage.
In the 6% that we now have, probably half of that is French producers producing in English in Quebec. We’ve actually gone from over 10% down to maybe 3%.
Senator Cormier: Why do French producers who produce in English get more money?
[Translation]
What’s the reason for that?
[English]
Mr. Cox: French producers have an advantage in that they produce in French and they benefit from things like a better tax credit by the Quebec government and various measures, which are understandable, in order to improve French production. They then, with that advantage, go to English production, which has a larger international market. Therefore, they try to have a foot in both worlds and are able to cross-subsidize, and that’s great.
There’s a problem for the anglophone producer in being able to do quite the same strategy. The strategy the anglophone producers use is to move to Toronto. There are an awful lot of producers who own companies in Quebec, and all their children are producing in Toronto or Vancouver. As soon as the father, usually, dies, that company will not exist in Quebec anymore.
We’re trying to get official language minority production in Quebec to be stronger, to be on a firmer base. CBC is key to that. For that reason, when Pierre Poilievre was going to defund CBC, we had a legal opinion done which said that the Official Languages Act is the way to defend English CBC from being defunded. We were going to take on Poilievre when he had a majority. He didn’t get the majority, and, boy, were we ever disappointed. We really wanted to take him on.
Ms. West: To speak to this quickly, we had a show with Vidéotron, but briefly, English-language CBC is essential to the promotion and celebration of the work we do in promoting our Read Quebec Book Fair, which just took place over the weekend. I was on CBC evening news, on “Daybreak” in the morning, on “Radio Noon Quebec with Shawn Apel.” It’s a kind of media coverage that we don’t see in federal media or in other media outlets at all. It’s really crucial to the media landscape for the visibility of our members and their books.
Ms. Varkonyi: It’s one of the only media outlets that will pay special attention to the English-language literary arts. The French media outlets are incredible. We wish we could have that level of coverage that the French media offers to its artists and culture in general.
Ms. West: A show just about books?
Ms. Varkonyi: Exactly, it’s incredible; or a general-interest show that then features books. It’s remarkable. The CBC is one of the only places left with the erosion of print media. Newspapers are not running book sections, so we’re pitching to our local CBC producers regularly. They’re the ones who are letting that English audience in Quebec know which authors are going to be reading, which authors have a new book coming out, which new authors are developing new works. They’re really vital to the English community in Quebec.
Mr. Cox: I just wanted to add one thing. Since 1991, the CBC has lost 37% of its constant-dollar budget. I’m critical, but the CBC has much less money than it used to have. That’s all.
The Deputy Chair: On behalf of my colleagues on the committee, thank you sincerely for being here today and for all of the information that you have provided to us to help us through this study. It is greatly appreciated.
[Translation]
Let’s move on to our second panel of witnesses. Tonight we welcome, from the Association des théâtres francophones du Canada, Allain Roy, President, and Lindsay Tremblay, Executive Director. Welcome and thank you for accepting our invitation to appear.
You will have five minutes for your opening statement, after which we’ll move on to questions; there will be five minutes for questions and answers.
Allain Roy, President, Association des théâtres francophones du Canada: Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for welcoming us. My name is Allain Roy and I am President of the Association des théâtres francophones du Canada, or ATFC. I am also Artistic Director and Co-executive Director of the Théâtre populaire d’Acadie in Caraquet, which is one of the ATFC’s member companies.
With me today is Lindsay Tremblay, Executive Director of the ATFC.
The ATFC brings together 17 professional theatre companies from across French-speaking Canada and offers them a range of services aimed at better positioning the sector, strengthening its capabilities, and increasing engagement with culture and the French language in minority communities.
These companies are true drivers of the cultural economy in French-speaking Canada. Together, they produce nearly 650 public activities per year, touching the lives of more than 150,000 people annually, including 65,000 young people, and employing more than 550 professional Canadian artists and artisans.
The ATFC also manages a foundation that supports the creation and development of theatre practitioners in the Canadian francophonie.
Several of the issues you are currently studying are of concern to us, but our remarks will focus on two in particular: support for infrastructure and workforce training and development.
Lindsay Tremblay, Executive Director, Association des théâtres francophones du Canada: First, let’s confirm that certain federal institutions — Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts — play an essential role as funders of the sector.
Public funding from federal institutions, which accounts for over 60% of the annual public revenues of theatre companies, is essential to their activities and operations.
This essential funding helps to provide rich and dynamic theatre seasons for official language minority communities; to pay salaries and fees to employees and contractors in the theatre community; to promote identity building, linguistic security, arts education, and academic learning; to promote the integration of newcomers to Canada; to improve the quality of life of Canadians in terms of health, mental health, overall satisfaction, and a sense of community; and to operate our physical spaces, which are true cultural hubs for our communities.
The role of these companies extends beyond the boundaries of theatre. These companies are pillars of francophone culture. In fact, theatres are among the most important gathering places and venues for French-language activities in our minority communities. Despite their role as community builders and unifiers, we are concerned about their funding, which is far from sufficient and increasingly uncertain.
Furthermore, access to basic theatre training in French-speaking Canada remains extremely limited. There are two theatre programs, in Ottawa and Moncton, but no programs in theatre technology or arts administration, which are two extremely important roles in our ecosystem. This means that people must either go to Quebec, enrol in English-language programs, or learn on the job.
Even opportunities for career development are few and far between. That is why the ATFC offers a range of professional development services. In particular, we’ve been offering an internship program for theatre practitioners since 2011, in collaboration with the National Theatre School of Canada, which provides several weeks of continuing education to a cohort of professionals. This project is a concrete example of solutions that stem directly from the collaboration agreement between the FCCF and several federal institutions.
Finally, it is important to note that federal institutions can also play an important role in terms of coordination and collaboration, particularly by collecting and sharing evidence-based data, supporting national promotional and outreach activities, reducing administrative burdens in the field, and promoting access to and circulation of works and artists from Canada’s francophone community.
Mr. Roy: In conclusion, whether as funders, investment levers, strategic partners, or sources of verifiable data on the impact and state of the sector, federal institutions are an integral part of the cultural ecosystem of Canada’s francophonie, and we evolve in symbiosis with them. Thank you for considering their current and potential role and for inviting us to contribute to your reflections. Thank you for your attention. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for your opening remarks, Mr. Roy and Ms. Tremblay. We’ll now proceed to question period, for a maximum of five minutes per senator.
[English]
Senator Osler: Thank you to the witnesses for being here. My question is on AI, artificial intelligence. If you heard the last panel, I asked about it. Certainly, AI is a topic of conversation in society, business, government, even the Senate. I would like to understand the impact of AI on the arts and culture sector. Specifically, what do you want the federal government to know about the impact of AI on francophone artists, performers and creators?
[Translation]
Mr. Roy: I’d say that the theatre is a living art form. As far as AI is concerned, apart from copyright issues, it doesn’t really have much impact on us. It’s a tool that can be used for anything related to communications. However, in terms of its direct impact on our work as such, I don’t really see any.
[English]
Senator Osler: In terms of regulations, legislation, funding, any of that, are there any considerations that you would like the government to know?
[Translation]
Mr. Roy: Nothing comes to mind, no.
Senator Cormier: First of all, in the interest of transparency, I am very familiar with this association, as I used to be its president. I am also very familiar with the theatre company that Mr. Roy runs, as I directed it for many years. So my questions today will be informed by that background.
I’d like to congratulate Mr. Roy on a show I saw over the weekend, which is an absolutely wonderful play that touches on the issues of French-language education in our history and clearly shows the role that theatre plays today.
I have a lot of questions, but I don’t know where to start, except that I would perhaps like you to elaborate on the issue of infrastructure. The theatre companies you manage, which are your members, have theatre structures, centres, and physical theatres. At the time of the collaboration agreement, many projects were developed as a result of consultations that took place thanks to the collaboration agreement that the FCCF signed with its partners.
Where does the issue of infrastructure currently stand across French Canada? What are your needs? With regard to the collaboration agreement that contributes to the consultation process, are all the players around the table? Are there other players who should be around that table? I’ll start with this question about your infrastructure needs.
Mr. Roy: Thank you for your question, Senator Cormier. The needs are enormous. Of the 17 member companies, about five are involved in building management. In addition, there is our network of touring circuits, which often visit schools. Furthermore, some schools have outdated theatres and no technical director to manage the venues.
There are many projects in the works, both in terms of building new performance venues and renovating existing ones.
However, one thing was announced in the 2025 budget, and that is that the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund envelope will be reduced and the program will be refocused primarily on equipment.
As a result, we will find ourselves in a situation where we will be competing with other infrastructure, such as arenas. As we said in our presentation, there are very pressing needs. We’re talking about meeting places, crossroads. We’re talking about entertainment, live theatre. These are the places where we meet the community.
These are challenges for which we would like the government to take into account the specific characteristics of francophone minorities and their infrastructure needs.
Ms. Tremblay: I’d like to add to the answer to your question about the agreement being discussed. I’d say that the main player is Canadian Heritage, because it’s the main source of funding for venues, venue construction, equipment, and so on.
However, we need support not only for venue construction, but also for venue maintenance. That’s often where we fall short. We have the support we need to build. We have a few construction projects coming up in Canada’s francophone community; others have already been completed, but they’re now at a standstill because there’s no funding to maintain them or keep them running. So there’s a barrier at that level.
Senator Cormier: If I understand correctly, the government provides money for building construction, but after that, financing comes out of operations?
Ms. Tremblay: Exactly.
Senator Cormier: Let’s continue with the issue of infrastructure. We are at a time when the current government is talking a lot about breaking down provincial barriers and ensuring the free flow of goods and services. How is distribution across the country going? In terms of needs, how well — or not well enough — is the federal government supporting distribution so that works produced in Saskatchewan can also be seen in Acadia, not only on screen, but physically? What are your challenges in terms of distribution?
Ms. Tremblay: That’s a good question.
There are several challenges when it comes to distribution. Fortunately, we have a wonderful distribution network among ATFC members, where we have specialized venues to host performances by different companies. However, as Mr. Roy said, our distribution network is much broader than that.
To reach official language minority communities that are located in rural areas and outside major centres — often referred to as multidisciplinary presenters — we have to perform in their venues, which are sometimes located in schools. This becomes a challenge both in terms of artistic creation and choice and in terms of funding, because it is increasingly difficult to obtain funding since touring and distribution support programs have all been consolidated. National and international distribution all comes under a single program. So we’re all competing with each other. If I have a show that wants to go to Caraquet, I’m competing with a show that’s going to France, Africa, and so on.
Senator Cormier: Where does the money comes from?
Ms. Tremblay: We’re talking about federal institutions, in this case the Canada Council for the Arts. Our member companies sometimes receive a small amount of additional funding from the province. However, I would say that most of the funding for touring and distribution comes from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Senator Cormier: Are you saying that the council and its programs aren’t suited to your current circumstances? Is that what I’m hearing?
Ms. Tremblay: The programs have just changed with the announcement of the new portal. The programs have undergone a number of changes. We are waiting to see how merging the two programs will affect us in the field. This process just began at the start of the fall. We are waiting to see what happens, but we have concerns.
Mr. Roy: I would like to expand on that answer.
I recently spoke with a member company. Before the pandemic, this company travelled internationally a lot. It used to be that nearly 100% of applications were accepted, but recently only one in two or one in three applications has been accepted. To have an international presence now means having a presence on both the national and international stages. If I have a project in the Yukon or the Northwest Territories, I will be competing with an invitation to a festival in Limoges, France. There is no comparison. I think that is the fundamental problem: We are comparing things that cannot be compared.
The Deputy Chair: I’d like to ask a follow-up question and then I’ll recognize the other members.
What is the solution to this problem?
Mr. Roy: It used to be that national presence and international presence were two separate things.
The Deputy Chair: Okay.
Mr. Roy: We were able to compare things that could be compared.
The Deputy Chair: How do we solve that problem? That’s my question. How do we bring things back to the way they were before the pandemic if everything is different now? Is there a solution?
Ms. Tremblay: I think there’s a problem in terms of consultation. I don’t know to what extent the community was consulted prior to these changes. I think one of the solutions would be to start by talking. For example, the Canada Council for the Arts talks to people, organizations, and companies in the field to understand their needs and realities in order to align itself with those needs, across all disciplines.
The Deputy Chair: Funding is required, as well?
Ms. Tremblay: Naturally.
Senator Moncion: My question still concerns funding. I would like to understand how you survive in this maze of venue shortages and fierce competition. You mentioned that there are five theatre companies that have their own venues. They also face the challenge of maintaining these facilities. In this regard, what percentage of your revenue doesn’t come from the government? Let’s take La Nouvelle Scène Gilles Desjardins as an example. What is the percentage of revenue that comes from audience attendance compared to the funds you receive from the government?
Ms. Tremblay: Public revenues from federal funders alone account for an average of 61% of our members’ financial structure. We have the exact figures, I could send them to you. Then there is approximately 20% in public funding from the province and the municipality, region, or territory. The rest comes from independent revenue, such as ticket sales and show sales for those who tour, and finally from donations.
Senator Moncion: Speaking of donations, I believe it was you, Mr. Roy, who mentioned a theatre foundation.
Mr. Roy: Yes.
Senator Moncion: I think that’s fantastic. How much of that income can you use? Often, foundations keep their funds and distribute the income they earn, but the funds themselves remain intact. I imagine that donors make large contributions to keep theatre alive in Canada. I’d like to understand this structure, because it’s extremely important.
Mr. Roy: The Fondation pour l’avancement du théâtre francophone au Canada is a foundation that awards prizes every year. The money we collect in donations is handed out as prizes. The Théâtre populaire d’Acadie has a foundation; this money is invested and the interest, if you will, funds its operations each year. It’s a challenge, too, as we know. I would say that even we have lost our touch a little, because there have been years when it was absolutely impossible to recruit. As a result, we’re in a situation where we’re living with the same amount of money as in 2019. That was the last time we received a four-year grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
We have just submitted an application. That money doesn’t have the same value today, of course, so sometimes we have to cut back on our activities. We do a little less with the money we have. That’s the solution for now. We’re waiting for the next four-year grant. We don’t expect any big surprises. At best, we’ll get the same amount we had before. What we had were sums dating back to 2019.
Ms. Tremblay: What you describe for the foundation is a dream. We would love to do that for our foundation, but the way it is structured means that it exists to compensate for the lack of access to professional development or support for creation. So, the way it works is that we have partner organizations such as Caisse populaire Desjardins, RBC, the Mansour Foundation, and the Viola-Léger Foundation, which give us money each year so that we can then redistribute these funds on the ground.
We keep a very small portion to help manage the foundation, but I would say that in total, we keep less than 15%, and the rest is given away. We are currently working on our structure to develop this side of things so that we can have an endowment fund, but we’re also dependent on the grants we hope to receive — if I can put that out in the universe — to develop an endowment fund and make our activities more stable and sustainable through our foundation.
Senator Moncion: There are a lot of family fortunes being passed on at the moment. That’s a way to see this. Some people are looking for areas that may be underfunded in order to provide funding that could be used to support Canadian culture in all its forms. Theatre is one area where this could be put to very good use.
Ms. Tremblay: If you have any names, I will write them down.
Senator Gerba: Part of my question was asked by Senator Cormier regarding distribution. We know that the circulation of works and artists is essential to cultural vitality and to our francophone official language minority communities. However, it poses major logistical challenges. It is very costly.
Do you have any recommendations for the federal government? How could it help artists with their mobility, but also with everything related to logistics to facilitate circulation? As you mentioned, Mr. Roy, when you leave Nunavut, New Brunswick, or British Columbia to travel, it is complicated and very expensive. What do you think the solution would be?
Ms. Tremblay: The distribution ecosystem is very complex, and we’ve really reached a point where we need to sit down and talk. Decisions need to be made, because we have artists, technicians, and people who go on tour and want better working conditions. That’s perfectly fine. We absolutely want to offer better working conditions. This means that it costs companies more to send shows on tour.
Since it costs more, they have to charge more to the venues hosting the show. The venues don’t necessarily have more money either. We’re caught in a vicious circle. We need to talk to each other and make decisions. I’m also talking about funders and federal institutions that are in a position to make a difference. They need to be at the table to discuss these issues so that we can find solutions together.
Senator Gerba: What particular federal institution are you thinking of?
Ms. Tremblay: I am thinking of Canadian Heritage, because distributors receive most of their funding from that department. I am also thinking of the Canada Council for the Arts, because it funds theatre companies and travelling artists. Are there any others at the federal level?
Mr. Roy: No.
Senator Gerba: Are there any programs currently funding travel outside of Canada?
Ms. Tremblay: Yes, the Canada Council for the Arts.
Mr. Roy: Yes, as we were saying earlier, anyone wanting to tour on the national and international stage rely on these envelopes for financial support to travel abroad.
Ms. Tremblay: There are also contradictions, however, because they are going to fund a delegation to go abroad and talk about their activities. Once the activities or the show are purchased by the other country, there’s no more funding to help the company take the show on an international tour. Here, too, we find ourselves in a vicious circle and faced with contradictions. No one is acting in bad faith, but there is something that isn’t working in the structure.
Mr. Roy: I think we need to have the opportunity to sit down at the table and have a discussion with them. We don’t have a solution right now, but we could find one together, rather than just saying we need more money.
Senator Gerba: Would a special structure be needed to manage logistics? Do the same criteria apply both internationally and across Canada?
Ms. Tremblay: Do you mean like a federal agency that would manage every company’s tours?
Senator Gerba: Do you always turn to the same resource?
Ms. Tremblay: The companies either have the resources to handle the logistics of their productions themselves, or they hire people to do it for them. It’s often a case-by-case basis. Companies have someone on their permanent staff who handles this, because they tour a lot.
Mr. Roy: Yes.
Senator Gerba: My question concerns the federal structure that funds you to do this. Is it the same one that you use, that you consult? Is it the same institution that you always ask for the same funding for logistics?
Ms. Tremblay: At the federal level, yes.
Mr. Roy: Yes.
Ms. Tremblay: It’s the Canada Council for the Arts. Then each province has its own program. How well funded are these programs? That’s a whole other question. It varies from province to province and territory to territory, but at the federal level, it’s mainly the Canada Council for the Arts. All of our members benefit from this funding.
Senator Gerba: When we talked about consultation, should the Canada Council for the Arts be talking, for example, with Export Development Canada or Global Affairs Canada? Who should be talking to whom?
Ms. Tremblay: That’s an excellent suggestion. We’ve solved it.
Senator Moncion: I would like to come back to international exposure. When you said that theatrical productions could be purchased by another country, once that happens and the production has been sold, all costs must then be covered by ticket sales. That’s what you mentioned, and at that point, there’s no funding to get people out there, so you can make a profit to keep going and all that.
It wasn’t just internationally, but also locally. I know Quebec is much better structured. There’s a lot of summer theatre that people come out for. In the winter, it’s indoor theatre.
Often, it’s the artists who buy the venues they perform in; they’re the ones who buy the shows and run them at home. Some even do it in their vineyards. What can we do to get you to that place?
Ms. Tremblay: There’s a company that put on a show in recent years that won every award going. They wanted to tour all over the place, in Atlantic Canada, the West, and Ontario. There were 70 confirmed performances, but they did not get any funding. This raises the question. The community says it wants to host this show, the show is available and ready to go on tour, but it can’t be funded. There’s a problem.
What does it take for a show to have a funding guarantee?
I want to add a bit of nuance to what you said. Yes, a show can be purchased by another country, and that doesn’t mean the company won’t be funded. It’s getting harder and harder to get funding.
It’s contradictory, because the Canada Council for the Arts, for example, will organize a delegation to send artistic productions to another country to sell their shows and products. Once they have achieved their goal, which is to sell, there’s no guarantee of financial support. We’re back to the circle of contradictions.
I don’t know if that answers your question.
Senator Moncion: That’s giving me a better idea. You mentioned people having to get together and discuss all of this. Has that happened? Are you having these discussions we keep talking about?
Ms. Tremblay: No, but that would be one of our main asks.
Senator Moncion: They don’t talk among themselves, even though that would help you gain a better understanding of the overall issue.
Mr. Roy: Yes, on both sides.
Senator Moncion: It’s not just a question of funding; there’s a real problem when it comes to talking about and trying to find solutions to the way we operate.
It’s the same thing when we look at copyright. We were talking about AI — I’m coming back to what you were saying — where we’re going to use parts of things that have already been created by AI and put them into something else that will be new, but this new production will have large chunks that were created by others, so in the end, since the resulting work belongs to or was created in part by others, it will not generate any income.
Mr. Roy: Our 17 member companies have real-world expertise. Take CORPUS, for example, which combines mime and dance over theatrical imagery. They’ve just returned from a tour of Scandinavia and Australia. They have absolutely incredible expertise that we could benefit from if we sat down with funding agencies to discuss the issue. Then there are other models where some companies often tour by doing co-productions with theatres, festivals, and other things of that nature.
Robert Lepage toured internationally a lot — and he certainly has earned his reputation — but before any production, there are international festivals that invest money. There may be a way to find formulas for developing projects where companies and festivals invest money. Buying a show from outside, from a promoter, doesn’t cover all the costs. We need to find a way to pool all of these resources. I think we need to put our heads together and think about this.
Senator Cormier: My questions and comments build on the questions that have already been asked. The Official Languages Act now recognizes culture as an essential sector. The collaboration agreement came up earlier. The collaboration agreement that the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française signed with various partners is a forum for consultation.
When we think of the theatre, we think of an ecosystem. Last time, you talked about a book pipeline, but it’s a theatre pipeline. You have creators who receive grants to create, you have theatre companies that stage these works, and then you have a distribution network that gets these projects out there.
In terms of established partnerships and partners, you talked a lot about Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts, and rightly so. The collaboration agreement includes other players and could include even more. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but wouldn’t a collaboration agreement or forum of this kind be a space to bring together players who are active in different links of the chain of creation, production, and distribution of works?
We used to have interdepartmental mechanisms. We would sit down with various departments to discuss various projects. If we think about departments such as Global Affairs Canada, which was mentioned earlier... Senator Gerba said that this department published a report on cultural diplomacy that mentioned the main partners within the federal government, which were Canadian Heritage, Global Affairs Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Employment and Social Development for everything related to workers and official languages.
In your opinion, would it be useful to increase the number of partners involved in the collaboration agreement or to have an interdepartmental consultation mechanism involving more departments? You have challenges in terms of human resources, training, and infrastructure, so there’s Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, a department that manages...
There are a number of players who could help you resolve these issues around the table. Would it be a good idea to bring in Immigration and Citizenship Canada, for example, since you welcome many newcomers and immigrants into your practice?
We haven’t mentioned the National Arts Centre, but there’s an event called Zones Théâtrales at the National Arts Centre.
What would you recommend as a structure or mechanism, building on what already exists, since we know there are already mechanisms out there?
Ms. Tremblay: I love all of that. The National Arts Centre is part of the collaboration agreement.
We haven’t talked about it yet, but Zones Théâtrales is a major player in terms of distribution and circulation for our members. That’s where they can put on their upcoming shows, whether it’s a showcase, a full production, a staged reading, or a workshop.
They’re a really important player. You could say it’s like a big catalogue of French-language theatre in Canada and in the regions of Quebec.
Mr. Roy: Zones Théâtrales also works a great deal on the international stage.
Ms. Tremblay: Absolutely.
Senator Cormier: Is it adequately funded? Are Zones Théâtrales adequately funded? Are all your needs being met?
Ms. Tremblay: No.
Mr. Roy: There’s a lack of fairness at the moment. If I’m invited to participate in Zones Théâtrales in the East, we’re often asked to apply to the Canada Council for the Arts for travel funding. If I’m in the Ottawa area, I don’t have to apply, but if I’m invited to another festival, I shouldn’t have to apply. As of now, it hasn’t been renewed.
Ms. Tremblay: And it’s not for lack of interest.
Mr. Roy: We are waiting for Zones Théâtrales’ funding to be renewed. We hope this will happen. It has to happen. It’s important.
Ms. Tremblay: They would really like that. I don’t think it’s bad faith on their part. They stretch every penny they can, just like the rest of us. We’re experts at stretching pennies. To welcome artists, they have to find solutions. We try to support them in that as a community, but there really is a lack of fairness overall.
Senator Cormier: You mentioned universities and colleges in relation to training. There’s the National Theatre School in Montreal. There are programs in Moncton and Ottawa, but they don’t cover all the disciplines involved in the theatre world.
What can you tell us about that? Education is still at the heart of the issues facing the francophone community. Do we need more programs? Do we need to provide funding so that students can study? How can we help students in provinces where there is no training? Is there a scholarship program? Are there things that could be useful in this context? After all, education is the raw material of creativity.
Ms. Tremblay: Before answering that question, I’d like to quickly respond to your earlier question about the agreement. It would be very important to develop these mechanisms for interdepartmental discussion. That would be the beginning of a very exciting and sustainable solution. I just wanted to mention that because I think it’s really important. They’re already doing this with the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française, but it could be formalized as part of a collaboration with federal institutions. That would be a great way to continue the conversation and find possible solutions.
Mr. Roy: In terms of training, the programs in Moncton and Ottawa currently focus mainly on acting and performance. There’s also the practical side, though, everything that goes on behind the scenes, everything that makes the performances possible. As we mentioned in our presentation, right now, you have to go to Quebec, look for English-language programs, or learn on the job. We do offer training, but it’s continuing education. It’s not basic training, and that’s a problem.
Ms. Tremblay: The programs offered at the Université de Moncton and the University of Ottawa — which has had a conservatory for several years — focus on acting for actors and actresses. They also have a program in directing and theory. These programs, which are very good, need to be developed and promoted. I’m not sure that the solution is necessarily to develop other training schools, but rather to encourage the next generation to go...
The Western provinces are far away. If you’re in Vancouver or Edmonton and you come to study at the University of Ottawa, first of all, it costs a fortune. Moncton is even further away, on the opposite side of the country. We don’t want to take these people away from their communities forever. So we need to find a way to offer them this training and encourage them to return to their communities to work. To do that, there need to be job opportunities.
Mr. Roy: Here’s something interesting, and you may remember it from your other life: There used to be a program called the Flying Squad. It was a very useful program. Why did it disappear? I don’t know. It was a mentoring system. If I wanted to go into technical direction, I could be taken on by a theatre company, work closely with the technical director there and learn the trade. It was a Canada Council for the Arts program.
Senator Cormier: It was cut, is that right?
Mr. Roy: Yes.
Senator Cormier: Would you want the program to come back?
Mr. Roy: Yes, it was a vitally important program. Spread the word. It was a really interesting format.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you to everyone who participated in both panels today. The committee will certainly take your input into consideration. Thank you for coming tonight.
Thank you.
(The committee continued in camera.)