MR. CHAIRMAN (Mr. William Estabrooks): I will bring the meeting to order. Because we are going to be waiting for the other gentlemen, perhaps we could use our time effectively. We have a couple of pieces of business. We will go through the introductions in a moment.
First of all, Mr. Brooke Taylor, the member for Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley will be joining us later, and he will be assuming the Chair at that time. I am going to suggest that we strictly adhere to time limits today and that, at the very latest, at 9:55 a.m. we prepare to move out of here. I was going to suggest that we turn - Darlene just gave me the heads up on it - to Draft Only, the second page of the agenda. She has us organized to January 30, 2001. That is pretty impressive, Darlene. Darlene, you made a few points to me earlier, perhaps you could make it to committee members present.
MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): The dates I have here, starting in September, right through to January 2001, I am working around the length of House hours now, scheduling for vacations. Some of you are on the red tape committee, there is a Public Accounts Committees conference starting in early September. With all of that in mind, I had decided to put these suggested dates together to see if this is okay with the committee. It can certainly be changed, it is not set in stone. It is at the will of the committee if they decide to meet sooner than this, or if this is fine. I do have certain times in here; on the chance that the House may not be sitting, we will go in the afternoon, and if it is in session, it will be back to mornings. It is open for discussion, if you want to change it or alter it.
MR. RICHARD HURLBURT: Are these dates Tuesdays, Darlene?
MRS. HENRY: They are all Tuesdays.
MR. CHAIRMAN: This, of course, I assume means that if there are other more pressing topics that come up - we haven't, for example, informed any of these people of these dates?
MRS. HENRY: No, they have not been informed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I may, putting on another hat, the Georgia-Pacific gypsum situation, in my view, and speaking on behalf of our caucus, I believe it should get an earlier date, but that is just by way of suggestion at this stage. We could perhaps discuss it further. As of now, the September 26th meeting would be Margaret Stinton, Communities in Bloom. Other comments or topics from other members? Mr. Hurlburt.
MR. HURLBURT: Why don't we change that one, the gypsum, if none of them have been notified. Darlene, is that any problem?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Corbett, could you speak to that?
MR. FRANK CORBETT: I will second that, if it is a motion. I think it is agreeable too. There is stuff moving forward on that as we speak, so I think it may be more appropriate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Although I don't know if we want Communities in Bloom in here in January. Let's keep them in there, they might bring some beautiful things for us.
MR. CORBETT: That may be the time of year that they could probably make their best presentation also. Farmers have more time to talk to us in the winter than they do in the summer and in the fall.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Does that take a motion formally, or do we have a consensus that we move that?
MR. CORBETT: Consensus, I would say.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The cooperative tone. Thank you for your advance on that. Secondly, there is an FYI there, a letter sent to Mr. Taylor in response to a letter than he sent on our behalf. (Interruptions)
I guess that is just for information, Darlene. This information, which you have given us, in response to the letter from Mr. Kerr to Mr. Taylor, is for information only. Is there any need to discuss this further at this time, committee members? You really haven't had a chance to read it yet, have you?
MR. HURLBURT: I have. I would like to see that forwarded over to Elizabeth Mills on the red tape commission.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Has everybody had a chance to read the letter. Mr. Hurlburt's suggestion is that that be moved as a possible order of business with the red tape commission. Are we agreed? Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: I don't know that we as a committee have the power to do that, but if we wish, I certainly have no problem with it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Then, Darlene, could we ask Mr. Taylor to do that.
Good morning again, and I would like to thank our guests for appearing this morning. As I explained to you gentlemen earlier, we have a bit of change in House hours which means we go to work earlier, 10:00 a.m. It sounds like rough hours, I know. However, we would appreciate the fact that we could be moving out of here by 9:50 a.m. or thereabouts. What I would like to do is go around the table. We will introduce ourselves and then if you can then introduce yourselves, gentlemen, we would then allow you 10 or so minutes. You will find that question and answer period is very informal, but it is also very productive. We have found in the past, like I am taking too much time now to explain this, but sometimes some of our presenters go on at great lengths. So the old school teacher in me is saying, 9:20 a.m. and I am stopping you. Could you begin the introductions, Mr. Corbett.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen.
MR. ANDREW TERRIS: Andrew Terris. Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Cultural Network.
MR. KEITH MACPHAIL: I am Keith McPhail, Program Officer for the Nova Scotia Cultural Network.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Great. We look forward to your comments.
MR. TERRIS: Are we allowed to distribute to the committee?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Please.
MR. TERRIS: All right. I want to talk about five areas this morning. I want to just make some general comments about economic development. I also want to talk about the emergence of the new so-called economy and what that means; a little bit about economic strategy. Then I want to talk about two ideas that may sound contradictory, but are not, as I shall try to convince you. That is, I will talk about culture and economic development. Then finally I want to talk a little bit about the organization we work for, which is the Nova Scotia Cultural Network.
As far as economic development goes, I think we have to be aware - I am sure you are all aware - that there are some very key issues when one looks at the area of economic development, and that is the nature of the global economy is changing and it is changing very rapidly. The question we have to ask ourselves here in Nova Scotia is, how do we position this province and when I say this province I mean all areas of the province, to be a player in this new global economy. The so-called new economy has some characteristics that are quite different from the so-called old economy, and that is that increasingly it is in fact a global economy. We are no longer trading with our neighbours down the road or on the other side of the province; increasingly, people are trading on a global level.
Imports and exports become very important for local economies. The new economy is highly technological. It relies on the Internet, on E-commerce, on global transportation, and the pace is very rapid and the pace of change is accelerating. The new economy is knowledge-based; in other words, intellectual property, ideas have just as much value as physical or material property. It is knowledge-based and therefore education is very important; human capital is very important. It think there is one factor that we have to realize, and that is that the new economy, when you read about it in the business pages, it almost sounds as if it is something that is going to replace the old economy. Well, of course it is not, it will be overlaid on top of the old economy. We will still need the resource industries, the manufacturing industries, the service industries, and on top of that will be the knowledge-based industries.
When it comes to economic strategy, I want to quote one of our favourite economic theorists, Wayne Gretsky . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: He has made a few dollars over the years.
MR. TERRIS: He knows something about economics. His advice is to go to where the puck will be, and I think that is the attitude we have to take in terms of our economy. We have to go to where the economy will be, we have to think ahead.
In the kit that I passed out, there is a sheet that says Mark Wallace On The New Economy. He is the Chief Operating Officer of Bid.com, an Internet trading company/auction company. Under public policy - bullet 2 - one of the things he advises in the new economy is to "Avoid quick-fix solutions or holding on to dying industries to create jobs today. Instead, create a vision of where Nova Scotia should be in 10 or 20 years." I think that is extremely good advice.
There is the action in the new economy? It is in things like information and communication technology; E-commerce; biotechnology; and environmental technology. Tourism, we know it is a major growth industry in Nova Scotia. Education is very important and I would argue that culture is and will be increasingly important to the Nova Scotian
economy. Culture and economics, people think of those as being opposites, but they are not, and I am going to try, in the next minute or two, to convince you of that.
Do you know what the largest export of the United States of America is, in dollar value? It is what they call entertainment programming. It is the product of what they call their entertainment industry and what we call our cultural industry. It is movies, it is television programming, it is books and magazines, it is the music industry, CDs, et cetera, et cetera; in fact Canada now is the second-largest exporter of television programming in the world.
I think what you have to do is look at this sector, which includes the cultural industries that I have just mentioned, as well as the other aspects of culture which are the arts, design, heritage, and realize that this is an integrated sector. You don't have vital cultural industries. We don't have a movie industry in this province that stands alone, it is very much dependent on having artists, writers, musicians, choreographers, designers, visual artists, costume designers, and technical people; in other words, to have a vital cultural industry you need a vital cultural community and vital arts industry. You need creators. You need producers.
One thing I want to stress at this point is, and there is included in your kit, a map - this was done rather quickly, we were looking at it the other day and realized there is a lot that is missing - but I think what you can see is that when you look at a map of Nova Scotia and you start to map out our cultural assets, if you will, then in fact, arts and culture is not something that exists only in large urban centres. It exists in large and small communities all across the province of Nova Scotia. This is a social asset; this is a cultural asset; this is an economic asset. How big is it? Well, the last numbers we have I think are for around 1995, in other words, five years out of date, at which point the direct economic impact of culture in Nova Scotia was $0.5 billion. Those figures, I can guarantee you are a lot larger now. These are not numbers we made up, these are numbers that were provided by Statistics Canada.
The cultural labour force, the people who work in culture, from 1990-96 culture created jobs faster than any other part of the economy. Again, these are not numbers we are making up. These are numbers that come from Statistics Canada. Those numbers are five years out of date. The film industry alone, in that period, has grown from - I think the numbers are here, and there is a facts sheet in your kit - 1993-99 the value of film production went from $14 million $135 million. Other areas in culture have grown in a similar fashion.
So this is not only an important aspect of the economy of Nova Scotia, but I would argue that the potential for growth is absolutely phenomenal. The reason for that is the products of all of the cultural industries, film, movies, publishing, sound recording, lend themselves to being translated into digital data to be transmitted on the Internet. What that means is that you can produce a movie or a television program anywhere in the world, and you have a potential world market. The whole nature of the distribution system is changing. In Nova Scotia we have all the necessary infrastructure. We have the sound stages; we have
the Art College; we have the drama and music programs; we have the Nova Scotia Arts Council. We have the writers, the creators, the film companies. We have all the elements necessary for "cultural production." With the advent of the Internet we have a potential world market. There is no question whatsoever, that all of the major cultural products will be transmitted via the Internet within the next 10 to 15 years.
We have an opportunity to ride that wave because we have the skilled creators here. The Nova Scotia Cultural Network is an organization; we are basically an industry association. We are like the tourism industry association, which I am sure you are all familiar with. In other words, we are a membership organization, we represent the players in the sector. Our job is to promote cultural development, grow the industry, make us players, and we are a provincial organization, so part of our mandate is to ensure that this isn't something that is just metro-based, that in fact, everyone who works in culture everywhere in Nova Scotia has the opportunity to contribute to the social and the cultural and the economic life of this province.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good timing - nine minutes 30 seconds. Wicked.
MR. TERRIS: I appreciate that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Our format usually, as I said before, is quite informal. We recognize the speakers around the table so everyone has a chance. Who would like to begin? Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: Thanks again for coming. I want to talk and Andrew, you or Keith, whoever wants to talk about this first, but my first bit is going to be around intellectual property because it is a phrase everybody is using today. I heard a discussion that if you buy a McDonalds' franchise, that is what you are buying, their intellectual property. You are not really an entrepreneur, you are just buying someone's intellectual property and you are buying into their style, everything, that is intellectual property. I was also fortunate enough, about 10 years ago to go to an AFTRA meeting in Las Vegas at their invitation and at that point then, this technology of the Internet was still fairly new, they and SAG were really in a real conundrum about intellectual property. It is being played out today.
Where are we? You see our future with the Internet in some ways, but where are we today, protecting the intellectual property of our performers, but I think I am more worried about the writers and the producers and so on. Why should we be embracing that technology today when 10 years ago, the same people who were involved - I wouldn't say were afraid of it, but they were afraid of what could happen to their intellectual property. What have we done to waylay those fears?
MR. TERRIS: Well, I think in the intervening 10 years there has been new copyright legislation in Canada and that protects intellectual property rights. I think there are still phases of that that are in development. Right now, as we speak, the cultural network, we had at our last annual meeting, our members raised the issue of intellectual property because a lot of people still are not up to speed on what it means and how it operates - patent law, copyright law, trade marks, et cetera. We are now running, through the use of the Canadian intellectual property office, workshops around the province for people who work in culture just to inform them of what intellectual property is, how it works, how they can protect their intellectual property rights. In the cultural industries, that is key because what you are dealing with is music and film and television - things that are idea based. It is not so much a physical property that you can hold in your hand.
Increasingly, with the Internet, it will be digital data, it won't be a physical product anymore, it will be bits and fibre optic transmission at the speed of light. Intellectual property is a very important issue and I think technologically it is important. I don't know if anyone is following the whole MP3 issue with music. Already, music is being distributed in a big way on the Internet and what is happening is people haven't yet figured out a way to protect the copyright because these things are being copied freely. It is like the old days of bootlegging audio tapes, well now they are bootlegging digital files.
From my point of view, that is a technological problem. One thing that this society is very good at is solving technological problems, so at some point somebody will figure out how to protect those digital files from copying. That, I think, is a given because if they don't, then it is just a free-for-all.
MR. CORBETT: That is my fear. That it is not there yet. Two sides, one is the music industry and to a lesser extent, on the immediate side is the film industry because there is just so much more involved in creating a full-length feature film and then getting it out. Two kids can go into a garage and get a CD pressed for themselves; if you've got a burner at home you can do it. That ability gets out there, so I guess I want to talk about that side of the music industry maybe getting rid of the middle man, getting rid of Sam the Record Man. The other side I am intrigued by - Stephen King might have been one - that they actually put their books on the Internet. How that is protected. Can you enlighten me?
MR. TERRIS: No, because my field is culture, not technology so much. Again, I would argue that it is simply a matter of time until somebody comes up with a technological solution to protecting copyright on digital files; I am so certain of that. If we sort of hold back and I hear people say there is no way we are going to be able to protect copyright in a digital environment, I think that is foolish because there are so many advantages to digital distribution that the big companies, whether it is Microsoft, Time Warner, AOL, somebody is going to figure out how to protect those because it is in their interest to have that kind of protective technology.
MR. CORBETT: But on the consumer's side, if I may. I consider it shareware, if I am there and it is no different than when I bought my LPs and said, I would like to listen to that LP in my car, too. For want of a better phrase, I then download it to my cassette tape and popped it in my car. We tried to restrict it somewhat by putting taxation on those items, but there is a certain amount of when are you producing in whole or just in part. I don't mean to ask you on the technology side, but from the culture side, are you going to just get your group of consumers PO'd at you, that if you box them out completely, they will build a better mousetrap?
MR. MACPHAIL: Can I speak to that? I think that there is lots of licensing activity that is happening, too, when you look at SOCAN or CANCOPY, that starts to find the middle road and starts to negotiate between the two sides. I think that happens, too.
MR. CORBETT: So there is movement there . . .
MR. MACPHAIL: Yes. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Although he has been to Las Vegas. It is a secret which I think we will keep hidden. Other questioners. Mr. Hurlburt.
MR. HURLBURT: Thank you for coming in this morning and giving this presentation. Could you give me an overview of your membership and what regions your membership is from?
MR. TERRIS: We have memberships from all over the province. It is a very broad representation. We have community arts councils; we have members in every aspect of culture, cultural industries, and we have individual artists. Our membership is roughly 160, but that includes organizations that have their own memberships. I think collectively the organizations that are part of the network, I think we have about 7,000 sub-members. We have businesses which have about 8,000 employees, and we have educational institutions that collectively have about 8,000 students. They are distributed - obviously concentrated in metro - but we do have membership right across the province. Our board of directors, we are mandated in our by-laws, have broken up the province into five regions. So we have representation from all of the regions, and we also have representation by sub-discipline, because we want to make sure that the various aspects of the sector are represented and the various aspects of various regions of the province are represented.
MR. HURLBURT: So your executive is made up from all across the five regions?
MR. TERRIS: Our board of directors is made up from all across the province.
MR. HURLBURT: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was going to ask you, if I may, you brought up the fact that your membership has to reflect regionally, but you also said it has to reflect - what was the term you used?
MR. TERRIS: Sub-sector, sub-discipline. In the brochure you have, I don't know if I have a copy, I think if you open up, on this page it says what is the culture sector and it defines who we are: arts, cultural industries, design, heritage and performing arts.
[9:30 a.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for that clarification. Other questions? Go ahead, Mr. Chipman.
MR. CHIPMAN: I am just curious, here on your fact sheet it says the culture sector's direct economic impact in 1995 was $446.7 million. Then it goes on to say that in 1995, the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product was greater and more than twice as large as agriculture. It was also greater than that of fishing, trapping, logging and forestry combined. Well, forestry contributes $1.5 billion, which is greater. Can you clarify the confusion there?
MR. TERRIS: This is . . .
MR. MACPHAIL: Statistics Canada 1995, unless that has changed.
MR. TERRIS: Yes. What we are going by are the figures that were given to us by Statistics Canada. So I cannot claim to be conversant in the economics of the forest industry. What I would have to do is go back to Statistics Canada and say how did you derive these figures. These are numbers that were basically given to us.
MR. CHIPMAN: What they are saying though is $446 million and then if you combine the direct and indirect, it is $651 million, but I know agriculture alone contributes $1 billion and forestry $1.5 billion. There is some ambiguity there and I was just trying to clarify it, that is all.
MR. TERRIS: Fair enough, you know, this is the thing with statistics. People play games with statistics. We were not trying to play any games, we were just . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: No, no.
MR. TERRIS: This is basically what we were told by Statistics Canada and we were assuming that their approach was objective.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before I recognize Mr. Corbett, are there any questions from other members? Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: Just probably a comment for you. The announcement yesterday by the Board of Directors of CBC, I guess the biggest comment was how it relates to their supper-hour news show, but on the other hand, they are saying that it will get involved in many other ways in the regions and one was through cultural presentations. Have they had any discussions with groups like yourselves that would lead you to believe that they are going to get more active?
MR. TERRIS: There have been various consultations with the community regarding the role of the CBC and I have gone to several of them, but as far as how the new vision for the CBC will be implemented, no, I really don't know what their plan is. But I would say that in terms of the cultural community in Nova Scotia, CBC has played a very vital role in both radio and television in promoting and presenting the work of our creators and producers. I think if they pulled back from regional production, whether it is news or drama or music, I think it is going to have a very negative effect on the community here. You only need look at the success of Salter Street. Salter Street has, in part, been built on the success of their programming for CBC, like This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Made in Canada.
MR. CORBETT: When you talk about money that is brought in by a film industry, I am just trying to think of one of the more recent films. Two If By Sea, I think was one in the last couple of years. They had major star power from outside of here. Obviously, they would get paid more than say if it was a local actor headlining. That goes without saying I believe. When you factor in the cost of monies, what Sandra Bullock makes, if you say that the film industry in Nova Scotia is worth $20 million and she got $5 million for the picture, is that how you factor it or is it direct money spent in Nova Scotia?
MR. TERRIS: That is a good question. I cannot answer it. Again, I am going on the figures that were given to us by the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation. I would have to go back to them and ask, well, exactly how do you generate those numbers.
MR. CORBETT: We had that group in front of us not long ago and one of the points that they were very happy and proud to make was that on the whole they spend much more money on indigenous movie-making than say the other coast, B.C.
MR. TERRIS: That is absolutely true. If you look at the B.C. film industry, it is mostly what they call guest productions from California, using local crews.
MR. CORBETT: Yes.
MR. TERRIS: So we are really the hewers of wood and drawers of water in the film industry on the West Coast whereas here the larger proportion of film production is made in Nova Scotia. It is Nova Scotia film companies doing productions using local crews. I mean a lot of the reason that film crews come north is our dollar is a lot lower so there are real economic advantages. If that shifts the other way, you know, the whole film industry in B.C.
will collapse, but that will not happen in Nova Scotia because we are dealing primarily with indigenous production.
MR. CORBETT: I notice sometimes, you kill the goose that lays the golden egg because I know not only the dollar, but I know places in California that, for instance, to close a street down in Los Angeles would cost you almost, depending on where it is at, up to $0.5 million a day. They used to do that for tourism in Vancouver, but they eventually stepped it up and that was one of the cards that drew people away.
I am just going to pull away from the movie industry for a moment. My final question to you is, the cultural industry. I see it bigger than - and I am not knocking anybody here - fiddle players and sea chanty singers, but there is also a thing of, well, what you do best, you keep doing. I hope our cultural industry is a bit more broad thinking than that, in that we are not going to just stay on what we do best, that you would be out there encouraging us to develop an interpretive dance industry and so on. I leave that to kind of make your comment on it.
MR. TERRIS: For me, culture is something that is very broad and very deep. I mean some people think of culture as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Symphony and Neptune Theatre, but that is one aspect of it. I lived in Cape Breton for 12 years and it has such an incredibly, rich-rooted culture. I mean, that is one of the reasons why I think the culture of this province is so successful, is that the culture has very deep roots. So you have wonderful musicians, singers, storytellers, and that gives rise to movies and novels.
We were just at the Atlantic Book Awards and they were quoting The Globe and Mail on Alistair MacLeod's new book, No Great Mischief, and the reviewer said it was probably the best Canadian book of the last 10 years. Well, that comes out of a Cape Breton story-telling tradition. That is where that novel comes from. So we have a very important resource. I hate to bring up Ashley MacIsaac, but I mean he is sort of the bad boy now, but the first time I saw Ashley MacIsaac, I just was completely blown away and the reason was that he mastered a traditional form and then he pushed it into something new and what he did I think was quite miraculous. He has his psychological problems, but he is a musical genius and there is no question about it.
So it is exactly what you were saying and this, to me, is how culture grows and evolves. You take the traditional known forms and you push the limits into something new and exciting. I think that has social value and cultural value, it also has economic value, and this kind of creative thinking with the new technology has a potential world market. I mean people like Natalie, Ashley and Rita, the Rankins, they are selling to a global market because there are people around the world who appreciate Celtic music and the new interpretations of Celtic music.
MR. MACPHAIL: If I could pursue that just a bit further, I was at a heritage conference on Friday and I was astounded at all the genealogy societies now with websites and everything. So what they are doing is preserving with new technology aspects of our culture and heritage here. They are also actually marketing and the spin-offs from that are incredible because now people from wherever in the States are visiting these websites and deciding, okay, they have got the stuff that I am looking for to trace my family roots and they are coming north to follow it up in person, too. So there are all those extra spin-offs that are happening.
MR. TERRIS: The network did a tour of the province when we first started. We held 21 meetings around the province to find out what was going on in small communities all across the province, from Yarmouth to Cheticamp. We visited the, I forget what it is called, the genealogical society in Shelburne. They found out we were doing this tour and they said come visit. They have a phenomenal collection, number one, but number two, they get people from all over the world coming to visit them because they have genealogical records these people want to research. I wouldn't call it a tourist draw, but in a way it is; it is bringing people in. It never would have dawned on me that genealogical records and genealogical societies would be a tourist draw.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. O'Donnell would be a tourist draw in Shelburne alone. Cecil is the MLA for that area. Any other questions from members? I would like if you could clarify for me Mr. Terris or Mr. MacPhail, the working relationship, which the network hopefully has, with TIANS. Judith Cabrita has appeared in front of us, along with some of her staff, a number of months ago. I would assume you have a fairly close working relationship with TIANS. Could you expand on that for me?
MR. TERRIS: We are a member of TIANS. TIANS is a member of the Cultural Network. We go to their meetings. I have gone to the Tourism Partnership Council meetings. They are aware that culture is a very important and growing part of tourism. We are aware that tourists are an important part of the cultural market. We have very good relations with TIANS. In fact, at 1:30 p.m. today, I will be going off to a meeting on tourism and culture that is part of the development of the tourism strategy that is being updated for Nova Scotia. So we are in close contact with TIANS on a regular basis, and other aspects. It is not just TIANS, it is the Tourism Partnership Council and the Department of Tourism and Culture.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for that clarification. Are there any other questions?
MR. TERRIS: I would like to make this point that is kind of nagging away, and I would like to be able to - there are a couple of things in your kit, I don't know if you notice, but there is a copy of a brief that we wrote for the Voluntary Planning Fiscal Management Task Force and I would urge you to have a look at that because it kind of elaborates on a lot of the arguments that I have made today.
I want to make one other really strong pitch, and that is to the importance of public funding for arts and culture. That means government funding, provincial funding. I know in some circles there is a real resistance to that concept, but I would argue that in the same way that on the science side, on the technology side, you need research and development in order to develop a commercial product. I know from personal experience and personal research that research and development is not something that necessarily happens within the private sector. You need public support of research and development.
For instance, to the Nova Scotia Arts Council money is very important because it puts money into the hands of the primary creators, not just in metro, they have a very good record of supporting artists all across the province. There is this idea that artists sit back, and I heard a thing on the CBC, a guy who was a truck driver complaining about how artists get this money to sit back and drink coffee and lead this leisurely lifestyle. Most of the artists I know live very close to the wire. They do not lead a life of leisure. Those people are the primary creators. Those are the people who drive the cultural industries. The market place, the free market will not support the kind of research and development that is absolutely essential to the growth of the cultural industry in this province and I would further argue that things like the tax credit system for the film industry and what had been a proposed tax credit for the new media industry are really essential to the growth of those industries.
In Alberta they had this idea that film was a commercial enterprise and that public money should not be used to support the film industry in Alberta. They shut down the Alberta Film Development Corporation and guess what happened? Their film industry completely collapsed. In fact, we were the beneficiaries. Some Alberta film-makers actually moved to Nova Scotia.
The economy of the cultural sector is fairly complex and what we do is we use public money and we leverage other sources of funding. So, for instance, provincial money helps to leverage federal money, private money, audience money, corporate money, sponsorship money, et cetera, but without that kind of seed funding, I think there is a real risk of a decline in what I think is one of our most promising industries.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to recognize Mr. Hurlburt and, if agreed, Mr. Hurlburt will be our last questioner today. Committee, is that okay? Mr. Hurlburt.
MR. HURLBURT: Is your organization having any input or doing anything with the Lighthouse Convention that is in Nova Scotia this week on the South Shore? This morning I happened to have my TV on BT and Lynn Crowell was doing a song on lighthouses. There are 31 lighthouses, I think, in Nova Scotia and she did a real bang-up job. This is quite a convention that the South Shore Tourist Association is putting on and it is international. I happen to have a lighthouse in my community and we are doing everything in our power, our community, to save and protect, but also to keep it public. Is your organization . . .
MR. TERRIS: Not directly but, again, you know, we have what we call the heritage sector as part of our community. So when you look at the culture sector, there are so many aspects and so many issues on a day-to-day basis. Something like that, what we would say is it is really for the heritage community to deal with problems that are specifically heritage oriented. The role of the network is to look at the issues that affect all of the sectors. So that would be something that would be very specific to heritage. If there were things that we could do to help, if they came to us and asked, yes, but we cannot attend every event, every conference. We have a staff of four and there is only so much that we can do, but we would certainly be supportive of efforts to save heritage buildings and that sort of thing.
MR. HURLBURT: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: On behalf of the committee I would like to thank you both for being here. Do you have any final words or something you would like to add to the comments of the meeting?
MR. TERRIS: I think I have made my point that culture is a vital part of the Nova Scotian economy. It has importance and goes well beyond economics. It is social. It is cultural and I just want to underscore the importance of public support. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, gentlemen. If I may, committee members, I assume that the business that we took care of at the first of the meeting is the only other business. Hearing no other business, I will accept a motion for adjournment.
MR. HURLBURT: I so move, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CORBETT: I second the motion.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We stand adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 9:49 a.m.]