Committee Transcript 2000-Oct-16 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

McMichael Canadian Art Collection Amendment Act, 2000, Bill 112, Mrs Johns / Loi de 2000 modifiant la Loi sur la Collection McMichael d'art canadien, projet de loi 112, M^me Johns

Mr Pierre Berton

Ontario Association of Art Galleries
Ms Joyce Zemans

Dr Robert Salter

Kleinburg Business Improvement Association
Mr Paul Reinhardt

Canadian Museums Association
Ms Janet Brooke

Mr Paul Duval

Ms Mary Mastin

Mr John MacEachern

Ontario Museum Association
Ms Marie Lalonde
Mr Barry Lord

Mr George McLean

Ms Pat Fairhead

Ms Mary McArthur

Mr Robert McMichael

Ms Virginia MacDonnell

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT

Chair / Président
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente
Mrs Julia Munro (York North / -Nord PC)

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk PC)
Mrs Marie Bountrogianni (Hamilton Mountain L)
Mr Ted Chudleigh (Halton PC)
Mr Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North / -Nord PC)
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC)
Mr Dave Levac (Brant L)
Mr Rosario Marchese (Trinity-Spadina ND)
Mrs Julia Munro (York North / -Nord PC)

Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Ms Caroline Di Cocco (Sarnia-Lambton L)
Mrs Brenda Elliott (Guelph-Wellington PC)

Clerk / Greffière
Ms Anne Stokes

Staff /Personnel
Ms Lorraine Luski, research officer,
Research and Information Services

The committee met at 1531 in committee room 1.

SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT

The Chair (Mr Steve Gilchrist): Good afternoon. I call the committee to order and welcome the members and guests. Our first item of business will be to simply put the minutes of the subcommittee report on the record.

Mr Dave Levac (Brant): The standing committee on general government subcommittee on committee business, report of the subcommittee.

Your subcommittee met on Wednesday, October 11, 2000, to consider business before the committee and recommends the following:

(1) That the committee meet on Monday, October 16, 2000, and Wednesday, October 18, 2000, in Toronto to hold public hearings into Bill 112, An Act to amend the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Act.

(2) That the Chair be authorized to request from the House leaders permission for the committee to meet until 7:00 pm on October 16 and 18, 2000.

(3) That, if required, a further one and a half hours of public hearings be held on Wednesday, October 25, 2000, to accommodate scheduling witnesses and that clause-by-clause consideration of the bill be undertaken after scheduled witnesses on October 25, 2000.

(4) That an advertisement be placed on the Ont.Parl channel and the Legislative Assembly Web site. The clerk is authorized to place the ads immediately.

(5) That each of the three caucuses provide a list of witnesses to the clerk by noon on Thursday, October 12, 2000, to schedule. Once the three lists are scheduled, the clerk will schedule those interested parties who have called into the clerk's office until the scheduled time is full.

(6) That witnesses be given a deadline of Wednesday, October 18, 2000, at 5:00 pm to make their request to appear before the committee.

(7) That witnesses be given a deadline of Wednesday, October 25, 2000, at 5:00 pm for written submissions.

(8) That witnesses by allotted 10 minutes for each presentation.

(9) That amendments should be received by the clerk of the committee by Thursday, October 19, 2000, at 3:00 pm for distribution to the members of the committee by 5:00 pm that day.

(10) That the clerk of the committee, in consultation with the Chair, be authorized prior to the passage of the report of the subcommittee to commence making any preliminary arrangements necessary to facilitate the committee's proceedings.

The Chair: Is there any debate on the subcommittee report? Seeing none, I'll put the question.

All those in favour of the adoption of the report? Carried.

MCMICHAEL CANADIAN ART COLLECTION AMENDMENT ACT, 2000 / LOI DE 2000 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA COLLECTION MCMICHAEL D'ART CANADIEN

Consideration of Bill 112, An Act to amend the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Act / Projet de loi 112, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Collection McMichael d'art canadien.

PIERRE BERTON

The Chair: That takes us to the business at hand. Our first presenter has already joined us: Mr Pierre Berton, no stranger to anyone here. Thank you very much for kicking off our hearings here today. I apologize that we have a relatively short period of time for each presentation. It may limit questions back from the committee, but hopefully it will give each of our presenters time to express their views. The floor is yours, sir.

Mr Pierre Berton: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I'll do my best. I'm supporting, as you know, the legislation which would maintain the terms of the original 1965 agreement between the McMichael family and, at that time, the conservation authority. It's become very controversial recently, which is interesting because there was a time when all three major political parties, Conservatives, Liberals and NDP, supported unanimously the idea of the McMichael conservation collection in its original form.

As you know, James Renwick of the NDP as early as 1972 tried to get the legislation passed; he tried again in 1982. In fact, at that time he had the NDP caucus and the Liberal caucus on his side unanimously. It was rejected by Premier Davis, not because he didn't like it. He didn't think there was any need for it. He was a very strong supporter, as was John Robarts, of the McMichael agreement and he wrote to one of my neighbours who complained, "The government does not intend to break the agreement," and the government didn't at that time.

But in 1989, as you remember, the agreement was nullified, and I think that was a mistake. We had then a period of what I would call empire-building at the McMichael gallery, in which all sorts of ideas were tossed about. I remember interviewing Barbara Tyler, the then curator of the gallery, and she told me, somewhat to my astonishment, that they intended, if they could, to empty the present log building, reserve it as staff quarters and move all the paintings into a new glass and steel gallery which would go down the side of the Humber Valley right to the trees, which would have to be torn down to maintain it. I thought that was unnecessary and I think I wrote about it at the time and caused a lot of trouble.

Premier Harris, with whom I do not always agree, has been vilified by some of the art critics for what they say is "superimposing his tastes on the art world." That is just a silly remark, if you ask me. What he is trying to do is go back to square one, where we began, and rectify what I think was a major error on the part of the previous government, the Liberal government.

You see, I see the McMichael gallery as much more than just another art gallery. It's unique. It represents to me a memorial, just like a war memorial does, to a time in our history, a shining period, when we stood on our own feet as Canadians and decided to be ourselves. We had the memory of Vimy behind us and the whole of the Great War, where we got international accolades. We were rejecting British titles, I think sensibly. We were coming to the end of the imperialist regime. We were standing on our own feet, insisting on getting a place of our own in the League of Nations and our own vote in the League of Nations, to which American opposition was very great. We went into the Balfour Declaration, which led to the Statute of Westminster, which insisted that we were the same, not under the coverlet of the British Empire but equal, and in no way subordinate one to another with the other Commonwealth nations.

In the forefront of this nationalistic revolution were the writers and the artists, especially the artists, this group of painters who came together and formed the Group of Seven in 1921 but who knew each other very well and had worked together before. They decided to show Canadians something about their country that they did not understand because they looked at it with different eyes. They showed them that the time had been passed to copy the brown oaks of Constable and instead replace them with the scarlet maple leaves of Ontario, and that's what happened. They were in the forefront of this nationalistic movement, they and a few of their contemporaries; people like Emily Carr, David Milne and several others who are mentioned in this original document.

It's important, I think, that they have their own gallery and that that gallery not be watered down by works which have nothing to do with what we are talking about. I am very fond of modern abstract art, I hang a lot of it in my house, but I don't think there's a place for that art of the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s in a gallery which is devoted to, really, the period I'm talking about, which is the post-war period up to the Depression, when the Group of Seven were an entity in this country. They should have their own museum and it should be for them. It's a silly idea that flies in the face all our knowledge of Europe, where many galleries bear the name of one group of artists or one artist, such as the Matisse gallery in southern France, which I have seen and which I very much like.

The Group of Seven turned their backs on Europe and became the first national art movement in this country. They deserve not only to be remembered for that but they deserve to be there in a place where the students of the future can see what they did, because it was a remarkable achievement. This gallery cannot be all things to all people, as some people would like. It is not just another art gallery-it's not the AGO, it's not the National Gallery of Canada-it is a gallery which pays tribute to one group of artists and it should continue to do so, and we should be proud that it does.

That's all I have to say, Mr Chairman. I don't represent anybody here but myself, but I know the gallery well. I've had two daughters who worked there as guides; one of my daughters was married there. I've seen it grow over the years to the present time and I hope it continues. Thank you very much.

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The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Berton. I again appreciate your kicking off our debate. Obviously, someone with your historical perspective is very appropriate and I appreciate you taking the time to come and make a presentation before us.

Mr Berton: No questions?

The Chair: Well, I don't trust any of my colleagues to do something in a minute and a half. We have a hard time saying hello in that amount of time, Mr Berton.

Mr Berton: Thank you.

ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF ART GALLERIES

The Chair: The next presentation will be from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. Good afternoon, Professor Zemans. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Joyce Zemans: I was interested to hear what Mr Berton said. Is Mr Berton still here? He seems to have left. I have a somewhat different take on the subject. I'm an art historian by profession. I've written about most of the members of the Group of Seven in one way or another, in books or articles, and I've spent a long time studying their work. I've distributed to you an article that appeared in the Globe last week, and a copy of a longer article, from which that was excerpted, which appeared on the Globe and Mail Web site as well.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, and I know this view is also shared by the Ontario Museums Association, whom you will be hearing from later.

It is true that the gallery had, as its original mandate, a requirement to respect and to present the work of the Group of Seven and to focus on the work of the Group of Seven, but I would suggest that any of you who knows the gallery in any way, shape or form would associate the Group of Seven with the McMichael collection of Canadian art. Indeed, it is world-renowned because of its focus on this group, and what it has done. I know the McMichaels are here, and I would like to pay tribute to the McMichaels, because as the director of the gallery, Robert McMichael himself added to the collection. He collected over 270 different artists, some of them Inuit, some of them First Nations artists, other artists who were predecessors of the group; some who were contemporaries of the group; and some who were, for that period, contemporary artists.

Indeed, in the 1970s Mr McMichael wrote in the annual report of the McMichael gallery, on several occasions, about how important it was to exhibit contemporary art. So in fact if we are looking for an evolution of the gallery and the way in which it respected the role, or has and continues to respect the importance of the Group of Seven, I think all we have to do is look at the gallery today. It reflects not only the work of the group, the archival material that's associated with it, but it also reflects the spirit of the group-because most members of the Group of Seven were adamant that the Group of Seven could not be frozen in time, could not only be a landscape school.

If any of you had the opportunity to see the exhibition called Art for a Nation, which reproduced the Group of Seven's own exhibitions in their own lifetime, the ones they mounted and curated, you will know that the Group of Seven included artists from Quebec, they included an artist from BC and from Manitoba, they included artists who painted portraits-Fred Varley was a great portraitist-and they included artists who painted abstractly. Kathleen Munn, who was a very difficult artist, was first presented in a very strong way by the Group of Seven. So was Bertram Brooker. These are the artists who now we're talking about removing from the context of the group, when their whole spirit was about the idea of creating Canadian art, of looking to what was unique about the Canadian experience, not only in representation of the landscape.

So I'll leave that point, but I do think that we have a lot to think about when Robert and Signe McMichael themselves broadened the collection, built on the work of the group, understood what the focus of a gallery dedicated to the Group of Seven and Canadian artists could be. Again, with great foresight, they collected the work of First Nations and Inuit art. Those collections appear in earlier incarnations in the bills that reflect the responsibility of the McMichael gallery. There's no reflection of the work of Inuit or First Nations artists in the current bill.

Indeed, even the work of the Group of Seven seems to be mocked in some way by the current bill, when it says that the McMichaels' goal was to reflect the beauty of Ontario in the first half of this century, when we know the Group of Seven made a point of going far beyond Ontario and of representing the whole of Canada, the north. When you think of the work of Lawren Harris, when you think of any of these artists, you don't only think of a scene of Algonquin Park or northern Ontario, as spectacular as those were. They made a point of inclusiveness in terms of what Canada was about, what its country was like, what its people were like and what its artists were doing.

So I think, again, it's very important to reconsider what this bill stands for and the narrowness of the interpretation-much, much narrower than the 1965 agreement, which left the opportunity for the gallery itself, for the curatorial staff and the board and the art acquisitions committee, the art advisory committee, to determine which artists had made contributions to the Canadian experience, to Canadian art.

It seems to me that this bill undermines this whole philosophy entirely and will in fact undo the great work that has been done at this gallery, not only by recent boards, but by the McMichaels themselves, if I may say so.

I'd also like to say that I think the government should be very much aware of the fact that in this bill, and in the idea of removing significant portions of the collection in order to remain true to what is apparently, or perceived to be, the original mandate, there is a real question about what will happen in terms of government responsibility for this gallery. In the 1965 bill, the government agreed to pay 85% of the costs of this collection. Today the government pays 40% or less of the costs.

Now, if the collection is narrowed, if it doesn't have its focus, as it currently does, not only on the Group of Seven but on Inuit and First Nations artists, the question will be, once the group of school children has come, will they continue to come? Will they come back if there isn't more and growing opportunities to see this work in context? Will the Europeans who visit, in large measure because of the Inuit and the First Nations collection, continue to come? What will be the financial base on which this gallery will operate in the future? It's not a private gallery, and there's been a lot of confusion about this. This is a public gallery, and the question today is how, in the public realm, galleries are able to maintain themselves. They do it through earned revenue.

I've read the report that Deloitte & Touche did that was commissioned by the government. They don't talk about changing the mandate at all. What they talk about is the necessity for a clean external image, an understanding of the purpose of this gallery, of the breadth of this gallery and the importance of being able to attract new works to this collection and to have donors, both of money and works of art.

I have a question for you: what is going to happen to those donors, who in the past have given major collections and major works of art to the gallery? What will happen to their successors? Are they going to be prepared to give work to the gallery when it's clear that there is no respect for their work?

The argument has been that the McMichaels' collection has not been respected, but I would argue that it has been fully respected. However, the idea of deaccession in work that has been given by collectors since the gallery was established and to pay no attention to the responsibility that public galleries have to those collectors is extremely problematic.

You've given me a very short period of time and you've said, would I make specific recommendations? If I'm asked to do so, I would say this: one, I think the bill is unnecessary. I think that as it stands now the original mandate is well respected in the existing legislation. Secondly, were you to go forward with the bill, I think it must remove paragraph 3 of section 1.1, the statement about collecting pre-1950s work that reflects the beauty of Ontario.

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There should be a re-introduction of the role of the gallery in collecting First Nations and Inuit art. It is an outstanding collection and it is known for this. It parallels the interest in the Group of Seven; it is not in any way antithetical to it.

I think we have to make sure in terms of the art advisory committee, as it's discussed in this bill, where there's no place for professionals, where it is only government-appointed members of the board and the McMichaels who are the art advisory committee-I've served on that art advisory committee. I've served on the board of the Art Gallery of Ontario. I've served on the board of the art gallery of York University. I've served on a number of boards. I have never seen such a restrictive clause. I don't know how professionals could operate in the environment that will be created by this bill. I think someone had better sit down and really figure out how to manage this collection and this public gallery in a publicly responsible way, because it will be very difficult to do, given the terms of the current legislation.

I'm very conscious of my time. I see Mr Gilchrist looking at me and I'm thinking, oh, I'm running over. But if you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer.

The Chair: Actually, Professor, you were bang on your 10 minutes. You did a very good job of following the schedule, and I do appreciate the perspective you've brought to us here today. That's the whole point of the hearings, to hear the different points of view. Thank you for taking the time and thank you for bringing copies of your articles as well.

ROBERT SALTER

The Chair: Our next presentation is by Dr Robert Salter. Good afternoon, Doctor. Welcome to the committee.

Dr Robert Salter: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I wish to present a personal brief, and Anne Stokes has very graciously given each of you a copy of the five-minute presentation. I am an orthopaedic surgeon, semi-retired from the Hospital for Sick Children.

The main conclusions that I've come to from studying this subject are, first, that the incredibly generous gift from Robert and Signe McMichael of an enormous collection of paintings by Canada's famous Group of Seven artists to the people of Ontario through the provincial government in 1965 represents one of the largest such gifts in the history of Canada. This gift also included the McMichaels' splendid log residence, Tapawingo-an aboriginal word, by the way, meaning "a place of joy"-and 14 acres of land in Kleinburg, Ontario.

The 1965 agreement which was signed by the Hon John Robarts, the then Premier of Ontario, and by Robert and Signe McMichael clearly stated that the McMichaels would be life members of a five-member advisory committee, and as such would have a major say in advising and assisting the crown in "establishing, developing and maintaining in perpetuity at Tapawingo a collection of art reflecting the cultural heritage of Canada."

In 1972, the collection was established as a crown corporation. At that time, Bill 216 included the following statement: "8(b) The corporation may expand, administer, or dispose of any money or property in furtherance of its object, subject to the terms, if any, upon which such money or property was given, granted, bequeathed, leased, or otherwise acquired by the corporation."

In 1982, the Hon William Davis, the then Premier of Ontario, stated in a letter to Mr Beevor that, "The government does not intend to break the agreement with the McMichaels, or to destroy the character of the collection." A copy of this letter is attached.

In 1988, in a letter to Robert McMichael, Barbara Tyler, the then director of the collection, stated that the aforementioned clause 8(b) of the 1972 Bill 216 would be retained in the new legislation. A copy of that letter is attached. However, the Liberal government subsequently removed this clause without the permission of Robert and Signe McMichael.

On September 30, 1999, I wrote a personal letter to the Hon Michael Harris, the current Premier of Ontario. I would like to quote from that letter, a copy of which is attached.

"Dear Premier Harris:

"Re: The McMichael Canadian Art Collection

"It has been a distinct privilege for my wife, Robina, and me to know Robert and Signe McMichael as good friends since 1962, that is, even prior to their making the most generous gift of their Group of Seven paintings to the government of Ontario. This was the exciting beginning of the now world-renowned McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

"You will be aware that the terms of the original `1965 agreement' enabled the McMichaels to have considerable control over the artistic content of the collection in keeping with their original concept. As you know, that agreement was later replaced by nefarious legislation that took the essential decisions out of their hands. Understandably, they have subsequently struggled steadfastly to have the `1965 agreement' reinstated. In the meantime, the quality and nature of the acquisitions have changed significantly-and not for the better.

"I have profound respect and admiration for Robert and Signe McMichael and I agree completely with what I consider to be their justifiable rights. Consequently, I implore you and your colleagues to correct this lamentable and shameful injustice to the most generous donors to the field of art in the history of Canada. Indeed, your actions taken now to honour our outstanding benefactors, the McMichaels, will be carefully observed by historians for the future." Perhaps I should have added "voters" as well.

On October 5, 1999, the Honourable Michael Harris responded to my letter and stated that he had "taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your letter to the Honourable Helen Johns, Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, for her consideration." I have attached a copy of this letter.

In a personal letter to me dated November 17, 1999, the Honourable Helen Johns stated that, "Ontarians are very appreciative of the gift from Mr and Mrs McMichael and other donors whose contributions have created a wonderful art collection in a unique gallery setting."

In the current year, 2000, Bill 112 is being proposed as An Act to amend the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Act. In essence, the amendments involve revising the act back to the original 1965 agreement with Robert and Signe McMichael.

Recommendation: The only decent, just, and honourable action for the current government of Ontario to take is to enact Bill 112, which in essence returns the act to the original 1965 agreement of the government with Robert and Signe McMichael. Consequently, I so recommend with much enthusiasm.

I might summarize very briefly what I take of Bill 112 from the explanatory note.

The bill recognizes the gift of the McMichaels and their vision. It also recognizes that there have been unwanted changes and that now it is appropriate to return the collection and to maintain it in the spirit of its original form in 1965.

The bill ensures that Robert and Signe McMichael will be life members of the board of trustees. The bill also ensures that Robert and Signe McMichael will be members of the five-member art advisory committee that will make recommendations to the board with respect to the acquisition and disposal of artworks and also will be empowered to designate the artists who have made contributions to the development of Canadian art.

The precise nature of the collection has been redefined.

The bill states that Robert and Signe McMichael should continue to have significant roles in matters related to the collection.

The functions of the art advisory committee, which includes Robert and Signe McMichael, have been clearly stated.

Finally, I applaud the current government of Ontario for creating this legislation that will return the collection to the original spirit and vision of its founders, Robert and Signe McMichael. All of which is respectfully submitted, sir.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Doctor. You've actually left us about three minutes, and if you wish to take a question or two-

Dr Salter: I would be pleased to do so.

The Chair: The rotation starts with the Liberals. We just have time for one caucus in this go-round.

Ms Caroline Di Cocco (Sarnia-Lambton): I'd like to ask about the 1982 agreement that was signed. I believe at that time the 1982 agreement, in conjunction with legal opinion, changed the role and even the management at the McMichael gallery. Do you have any comments to make about the 1982 agreement? That was when the McMichaels were moved from their home and they had a home purchased for them.

Dr Salter: I was aware of that, yes, but I'm not aware of all the details of that 1982 agreement. The one comment I made in 1982 was that the Honourable Mr Davis had been questioned about whether he really supported the gallery or not. He unequivocally did in that letter to Mr Beevor that I quoted, a copy of which is with you. I think it's at the bottom of page 1 of that letter. I don't know all the details about the arrangement of leaving the house. As a physician and surgeon, I felt the family could have been treated with more compassion than they were.

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Ms Di Cocco: But did you realize that in 1982 they did sign away the advisory capacity-not the advisory capacity but the whole governance? Their role was reduced in that 1982 agreement and they became founders emeritus, whereby they were now advisors. That was stated in the Court of Appeal decision in 1997. That meant that was also an agreement the McMichaels signed that obviously upheld the position of the government in 1997 when they went into the Court of Appeal.

Dr Salter: That is what is being changed now. Being emeritus myself, I recognize the Latin origin of that term, "e" meaning "out" as in "exit" or "emission," and "merit" meaning you merit being out. But the point is that as emeritus or whatever they were called, these two people, these wonderful Canadians, have been the most generous of all donors of art in this country. They may have signed a document. I don't know. I'm not aware of that and I'm not a lawyer. But I think they deserve to be treated with great kindness and compassion and with generosity of spirit.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Doctor. I appreciate your taking the time to come and make a presentation here today.

Dr Salter: You're welcome.

KLEINBURG BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION

The Chair: Our next presenter will be Mr Paul Reinhardt from the business improvement association of Kleinburg. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Paul Reinhardt: Thank you very much for inviting our views. I'd like to address myself strictly to the economics of Bill 112. The business community is extremely concerned that we will be badly hurt by this bill. The reason is that, as business people, we know that if you restrict choice to the public it will make an offering much less attractive.

This bill will restrict the gallery again to the original mandate. We look to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the ROM, and we see that these two institutions have had enormous success in tailoring their offerings to the marketplace. They have long strayed from their original mandates, and that's why they have been so successful. They're offering from Chinese vase-making to witchcraft and things of this sort. We're stunned that this market principle is not allowed to prevail in the case of the McMichael. We predict that the revenues to the McMichael will go down as a result. Also the revenues to the business improvement association will go down substantially.

We also want to point out to you that although there would be initial savings to the government in terms of cuts to the McMichael budget, on a per-visitor basis the subsidy that will be paid to the McMichael will definitely increase.

The reason I'm here is to point out to you that the damage that will be done by this bill is not restricted to a smaller art offering at the McMichael, but there is a spillover of the McMichael into the Kleinburg business community. Let me elaborate.

The village of Kleinburg has an authentic 19th-century streetscape. It is still in marvellous shape. We are a drawing card for the city of Toronto's tourism industry, the wedding business and the movie business. We have them all out there because apparently we are so attractive to them.

It is a country escape. Every big city has a country escape. Kleinburg is to Toronto what Seven Oaks is to London, if you like. It is also an asset to Toronto to have Kleinburg in its current state for the 2008 Olympic bid.

I will stay within my 10 minutes, but I just want to get to this important point. The village is splendidly preserved, while historical buildings elsewhere are going under. The reason is that we have the McMichael pursuing very successful market strategies. They have drawn the critical number of visitors to Kleinburg that we need in order to generate sufficient revenues to operate profitably from very expensively maintained historical houses. This spillover into heritage preservation is not something that will show up explicitly in any books in an accounting sense. It is just something that happens. It is a so-called externality. But we're very much a beneficiary, and everybody who comes to Kleinburg benefits from it. So you hit a very large number of people if you hurt the McMichael, but unfortunately they cannot show these dollar figures.

Let me try to further substantiate the claim that there's big money involved that the McMichael spills over into the cultural community. We point to the horrendous subsidies that are paid by governments everywhere to maintain the dwindling stock of historical houses in their care. We point to the huge sum of money that was required to restore the Grange, for example, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. These are large sums of money that the McMichael did not have to pay to create a heritage component. The McMichael gallery is part and parcel of a living historical community, and we are very much appreciative of their presence.

One final point: I find it puzzling that this government does not respect the contribution the McMichael makes through the market. The McMichael gallery is harnessing the market to channel funds into historical houses.

We respectfully ask that this bill be withdrawn.

I have 25 copies. I don't know who gets them.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Reinhardt. If you would like, we've got time for questions from one caucus. This time it will be the NDP.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Trinity-Spadina): Mr Reinhardt, I've got to tell you that I'm sure your business case has moved the Conservative members. As you know, they're very concerned about business, generally speaking, most of them being businesspeople. I'm happy that you came to bring this case to them, because I know it will be part of their consideration. But obviously your case is not purely business.

This bill says they should go back to the original mandate, where, "The board shall ensure that the collection reflects the cultural heritage of Canada and is comprised of artworks and objects and related documentary materials created by or about," and it lists the people. Then it says, "other artists who have been designated by the art advisory committee," under a certain clause, "for their contributions to the development of Canadian art," will be determined by the committee of five.

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Frankly, I'm concerned about what happens to those artworks, as Professor Zemans made the case, and I'm assuming that you respect the fact that the McMichaels are a central key component of the gallery. I'm also assuming that the progress that it has made in terms of the other artworks it has acquired is a good thing too, for the gallery, for the community and for Canadian art in general.

Mr Reinhardt: That's precisely what I tried to say.

Mr Marchese: You're worried that if we shift back to that narrow focus, we will lose some of the people who might otherwise come. We might even lose some donors to the gallery; the financial contributions might be diminished. Is that the case?

Mr Reinhardt: Yes, very much so. I've lived in Kleinburg for 30 years. We in the business community in Kleinburg have been able to tell, year after year over the last 20 years, that business and the amount of traffic we're getting in the village core has been increasing constantly. I run a bookstore in Kleinburg. I know in talking to people that we get a lot of their overflow. I just worry. It's a very classy type of person who comes, and we have a wonderful relationship with the McMichael. It is a kind of symbiotic relationship. We advertise each other.

I could not see that the government really would want to scuttle this efficient kind of arrangement that has benefited historical preservation in the arts community.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Reinhardt. We appreciate your taking the time to come before us here today.

Our next presentation will be from Mr Dave Bernstein. Is Mr Bernstein in attendance?

Mr Robert McMichael: We've just learned today, as a matter of fact, that Mr Bernstein has been admitted to the Toronto General Hospital in serious condition. I don't have any more details about it.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr McMichael. That will put us back on schedule. I'm sorry to hear the circumstances, though, around that.

CANADIAN MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from the Canadian Museums Association. Is Janet Brooke in attendance?

Ms Brooke, good afternoon. Your timing is perfect. I'll give you a second to collect your thoughts and your notes. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Janet Brooke: Thank you for the opportunity to express our views regarding Bill 112.

The Canadian Museums Association is a national organization dedicated to promoting the interests of museums and museum professionals at a national level. We represent some 2,000 individuals and institutions across Canada. Our membership includes all of Canada's prominent arts institutions. We are closely aligned with other national organizations seized with this issue, including the Canadian Art Museum Directors' Association.

We believe that Bill l12 is unnecessary, inappropriate and potentially hazardous to the health of the cultural community in Ontario and beyond.

Why unnecessary? The government argues that it has been prompted to act in light of certain financial difficulties at the institution. We understand the government's view that it is obliged to act in the interests of Ontario taxpayers, but we believe that this is not the way to go. We believe that the institution itself, and the government of Ontario as the principal shareholder, have the administrative and regulatory tools already in place to resolve those difficulties, without resorting to legislation.

The implied assumption here is that, somehow, the institution's curatorial direction is to blame for the difficulties and that those problems will go away by retrenching the mandate. Where is the evidence of this link between mandate and the problems that the bill purports to resolve? We have found none; the government has certainly offered none to this point. In the absence of such evidence, we challenge the premise of this extraordinary measure.

Why inappropriate? Because it represents a serious breach of the long-accepted principle in Canada that cultural institutions should operate at arm's length from government. It is highly inappropriate that the state should step in to substantially alter the curatorial direction of any cultural institution. Where does such intervention stop? Are we to believe that this or any future government will not step in to alter the course of another institution through the same means, should it not be pleased with its curatorial policy?

The government states that this is not a precedent and that it is responding to a unique and special set of circumstances. What does this mean? One can find something unique and special about many cultural institutions in Ontario, and throughout Canada for that matter. They are all special in their own way. What does it matter to claim that this is not a precedent? In six months, who will remember those comforting words?

Furthermore, the bill raises the prospect of a massive deaccessioning of thousands of works currently in the collection, with attendant impact on the gallery's relationship with the donors, not to mention the potentially disastrous impact on the art market.

Decisions regarding the acquisition and deaccessioning of artworks entail important aesthetic, ethical and legal considerations that require considerable knowledge and expertise on the part of those responsible for running the institution. We believe that such decisions should rest with the board of trustees of such institutions, acting on the advice of the professionals who are daily seized with the practical issues.

The creation of an arts advisory committee with wide discretion in regard to the acquisition and disposal of works of art, with no provision for participation by experienced professionals, is alarming. Can anyone seriously believe that this advisory committee will not profoundly influence the thinking of the board of trustees when its chairman is a member? We believe that it undermines the fiduciary responsibility of the board of trustees, who are accountable first-hand for keeping and developing the institution in the public trust.

The government contends that it is not dictating what is art and that it is merely restoring the collection to its original course. We regard this as sophistic. The net effect is that the government is striking directly at curatorial practices. Has the institution varied from its original course? The courts have recently confirmed that the original terms of the agreement remain valid; in other words, they have been respected. There is no objective evidence that the institution has blindly and willfully ignored its mandate. Many would in fact argue that the collection has evolved in its original spirit into a highly respected, indeed admired, voice for Canadian art.

Finally, why is this bill hazardous to the health of the cultural community? The bill would place inordinate influence on the running of an institution in the hands of one donor. No one questions the important contribution the McMichaels have made. Nevertheless, this bill will stir considerable uncertainty, even anxiety, among other patrons and donors to the institution, who will justifiably wonder if their original covenants with it can or will be respected. It represents a breach of trust with the many supporters of the collection since the McMichaels' notable contribution. It sends a strong signal as well to present and future patrons, who might equally like to have such long strings attached to their contributions, and to other institutions that must daily negotiate agreements for donations that are the backbone of their collections. In other words, it raises both ethical and legal considerations that should be investigated carefully before this bill moves forward.

In fact, the Canadian Museums Association strongly recommends that the government undertake an independent review of the entire matter before proceeding. There are too many unanswered questions: questions concerning the link between the institution's mandate and its financial situation; questions concerning the role of the arts advisory committee in relation to the board of trustees; questions concerning the legal implications of deaccessioning; questions concerning a clear definition of roles between donors and professional staff; and fundamental questions concerning the relationship between government and cultural institutions.

The CMA would be pleased to participate in such a review, which we believe would enable a full and objective airing of all views on an important question whose impact extends far beyond the walls of the McMichael collection.

Thank you for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That leaves us time, again, for questioning by one caucus. This time it will be the government.

Mrs Elliott: I can't disagree more with a number of the comments you've made. There are a number of things that I think need to be addressed in your points.

First of all, I think it's very important to understand right at the outset that this is a very unique institution. This is a gallery that is owned by the government of Ontario in a very specific arrangement for the people of Ontario, to be managed by the people of Ontario.

You mentioned a massive decommissioning. The new chair of the board has stated very clearly that this would be inappropriate, given the ramifications for not only the gallery itself but for the art community as a whole. Surely you must understand that the ongoing controversy over the role of the board, over the nature of the collection itself, has resulted in a number of court challenges which are threatening the viability of the gallery.

You mentioned the issue of art professionals and you mentioned undue influence in the hands of one donor. I think it's important to recognize that, under this proposed legislation, the art advisory committee is to have five members, two obviously the McMichaels and others appointed. Surely you're not suggesting that committee of five would make decisions, would make recommendations to the board on acquisitions, on various pieces of art for the gallery, without consulting professionals in the field. This legislation simply says-

Mr Marchese: Give her a chance to answer, Brenda.

Mrs Elliott: Yes. This legislation simply says that professionals in fact would be non-voting members.

Ms Brooke: What is your question?

Mrs Elliott: Do you not think there is an opportunity here for professional advice from staff to be given to this art advisory committee?

Ms Brooke: Certainly in any of the documentation that was sent to the CMA, that is not mentioned in any way. There is no rule spelled out for professional staff in the provisions as I see them. If it's at the discretion of the art advisory board to seek expert advice from its staff, I would have to say that in normal museum practice-at least museum practice that I'm aware of as a museum professional, as a professional curator myself-usually things work a little bit in the other direction. That is to say, it is the professional staff that brings appropriate acquisitions to the attention of the board for their approval, or not.

Mrs Elliott: Or in this case an art advisory committee.

Ms Brooke: Or in this case an art advisory committee, the relation to the board being, to our mind, somewhat vaguely defined in the documentation we have on hand.

The Chair: Time for a very brief question, about a minute and a quarter.

Mrs Elliott: The financial situation at the McMichael is of serious concern to the government and spurred us to take action to try and find ways to solve this problem once and for all. Are you aware that since January an anticipated deficit of $300,000 has increased to well over $1.6 million in less than 10 months?

Ms Brooke: I am not specifically aware of that. But I would also say, sadly, in the larger context of museum work in this country, that's hardly an unusual situation. I'm sorry, but I can't think of many major institutions in this country that haven't had serious deficit problems at one stage of the game or another in their history, in their recent history, particularly during and immediately following our recent recession.

Whereas I don't in any way dismiss the importance of such news, I don't quite get the link between practices in programming and acquisitions and deficits. I don't see the direct link, the cause and effect that seem to be spelled out here.

The Chair: Thank you very much for taking the time to come and make a presentation before us here today.

PAUL DUVAL

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from Mr Paul Duval. Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to the committee. The floor is yours.

Mr Paul Duval: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I should like first of all to let you know where I'm coming from. I first knew the Group of Seven in 1930, when as a boy I studied under Arthur Lismer at the Art Gallery of Toronto, in the Saturday morning classes which were so significant for people of my generation. Among the people who attended there was the future head of the Art Gallery of Ontario, William Withrow. We were permitted to paint on the marble floor of the Fuller gallery in the institution, freely to paint with our poster paints as we wished, not directed by Arthur Lismer but inspired by him.

As an eight-year-old, this was my first opportunity to enter such a palatial institution. It was a magical place, partly because when we raised our heads from our painting, we could see Tom Thomson's masterpiece, J.E.H. MacDonald's masterpiece, Lawren Harris's masterpiece. For someone who lived in a house without electricity and no running water-we had an outhouse-and with a number of children, namely eight, this was a miraculous discovery for me. In subject, they might just as well have been space objects, but they were wonderful and for me they still are.

The contribution made by the group is equal, I think, to that when Lord Strathcona made the last spike into the railroad that bound this country in a physical way. The Group of Seven bound this country in an emotional and spiritual way that can hardly be rivalled by anything else. It's difficult to go to Georgian Bay or Algonquin Park and not think of Tom Thomson, an associate of the group, who unfortunately died too soon to be one of them. It's difficult to go to Lake Superior or the Rocky Mountains or the Arctic without thinking of Lawren Harris or to be in the upper reaches of the St Lawrence or the upper reaches of the Mackenzie River without thinking of A.Y. Jackson. They are part and parcel of ourselves in a way that we all learn from childhood.

Now it's been said that the McMichael collection-and I must confess I have known it since its beginnings; I wrote the early catalogues-is a mausoleum. This has been mentioned many times. The reason for this is, it was, and I think should be, an unchanging collection devoted to this magnificent group of painters. If indeed the McMichael collection is thus a mausoleum, then so is the National Gallery of England, the Courtauld collection in London, and so many other institutions including the Louvre itself. In Paris there are the various museums devoted to individual artists: to Rodin for one, the Muséum Romantique, which is devoted to Ary Scheffer, the court painter to Napoleon III. These institutions have a particular value because when you go there, you get a total concentration of that particular artist or movement. These are common places in the United States as well as in Europe. You go to see the Chagall museum in Nice or the Matisse Museum in Nice or the Renoir museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer or the Picasso Museum in Paris. Any of these places could be called mausoleums.

There is a significant place for institutions which show, unchanging, a collection of paintings where people can go and know they will find them there. One would be very unhappy to go to the Louvre and not see the Mona Lisa. It may be an overrated picture but it's a significant item in most people's lives. You would not go to the Uffizi and not see Botticelli's Rise of Venus or Primavera. There is a place for museums that are steady and staying as they have been for all time. They can make significant changes in the collection only by adding to it as the Frick has, for instance. But among the museums which are most revered, believe it or not, by major curators of the world are those such as the Frick. The Frick is usually considered number one, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City number two, but of the museums that are considered the most significant, they are the ones that have a permanent and unchanging collection where you can go and be sure of what you are going to see.

When I was very young, as I say, I lived in a house without water and so on; my father was a great admirer of the fledgling CCF and Dr Wordsworth. I myself had the privilege, having left home at 16, of being given refuge by the Canadian Forum magazine which had a small office on Wellington Street, Toronto, and they allowed me to sleep on their floor while I looked for a job. Those two weeks were very important to me and the socialists were practising what they preached. I do not bring to this any capitalist or other prejudice, I hope, but I do want to see this particular treasure saved as it is.

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I know that things have been added to it more recently. Where should they go? I think the people who have been attacking-and it's been rather vicious. It's rather sad, that a place that was originally called and is still referred to as Tapawingo, a native name for happiness, should have brought forward so much bitterness, so much spleen, so much unhappiness, some of it inexplicable, that people who have been so attacking the mausoleum, for what it was and what it was intended to remain and still should be, should do this.

I am speaking as someone who in 1946 wrote articles about Bourgeois, Riopelle and the Automatists that the Ontario establishment wanted me fired for. I was the art editor of Saturday Night and my explanation of the value of these new artists was not accepted. Only in Montreal, in recent years, in all of the catalogues is it referred to as the young man in Toronto who first, including Montreal critics, supported and saw the future for Bourgeois, Riopelle, Pellan and the rest. I say that to have the balance of the picture with the Group of Seven here.

Then in the late 1950s, when the break came in Toronto for modern art, through Painters Eleven, I helped hang those shows. I wrote the forewords for the Toronto and New York exhibitions. I do not apologize for any disaffection with modern art but I do suggest very strongly that those who have been so bitterly opposed to the existence of a museum which has its counterparts all over the world should do this: work as I did for some time-unsuccessfully at the time-for the establishment of a museum of contemporary art in Toronto. Montreal has had a museum of contemporary art for almost 40 years. Its establishment today is one of the most admired buildings for art anywhere in the world. Critics from all over have said so and it has received a number of awards for its design. It has been able to show its contemporary art regularly with marvellous one-man shows of the major painters like Bourgeois and Riopelle. Regrettably, none of those shows, not one, was ever accepted for exhibition in Toronto. Toronto has never seen a one-man show of Pellan, a one-man show of Bourgeois, a one-man show of Riopelle, a one-man show of Dallaire, and this the museum directors in Ontario should have their arms up about because these are among the finest painters we have ever, ever produced.

I suggest that they go forward, as I say, and try to get support for a museum of modern art. The reason I say this in part is even if I was totally sympathetic with shoehorning contemporary painting into the Group of Seven building, the building itself is not fit for it. Contemporary painting has a lot to do with giantism: 10-by-12 foot paintings are not uncommon, they are very common. They cannot be shown there. Number two, the building itself is not fitted for major works of contemporary art. The Art Gallery of Ontario does its bit, but it is a multi-faceted place and does not show Morrices beside Riopelles-not within 50 feet, not within 100 feet, not within two galleries.

The idea of juxtaposing a work by a contemporary painter and some of the works in the McMichael is a mistake. I regret to say that. I would like to say the McMichael gallery is large enough and designed well enough to accommodate both. But I do believe that Toronto has reneged in not supporting the development of a gallery which can truly show contemporary painters. God knows, there are thousands of them across this country at this very moment, producing works that reflect their ideas and their impressions of the world today. We should get to know that as soon as we can from their hands. This can only happen with a contemporary museum, and I would so much like to see this happen some time soon so I can enjoy it.

The Chair: With that, Mr Duval, actually we've gone a little bit over our 10 minutes.

Mr Duval: I'm sorry about that.

The Chair: No, I appreciated your perspective and the submissions you have made to the committee-thank you very much-as someone who's actually met some of the people whose works of art we're talking about.

MARY MASTIN

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from Ms Mary Mastin. Good afternoon. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Mary Mastin: To begin with, my comments will be brief. I am the daughter of Franklin Carmichael. As you know, he is very well represented at the McMichael gallery. My focus is donor legislation that will protect the donors.

From a personal perspective, my husband and I have donated a great number of paintings to the McMichael gallery. In fact, we have been major donors. Over the years we have donated several hundred paintings, oil sketches, water colours, the Antwerp drawings that my father did in his student years, various memorabilia-for example, exhibition catalogues, pamphlets, magazines, magazine articles, wood blocks for various books that he illustrated, wood-engraving tools, and his palette. We recognized that the foregoing were part of the Group of Seven history and as a result are part of the history of Canada.

From a broader perspective, other Group of Seven estates also have made contributions to the gallery's collection of paintings and memorabilia. Just to mention a few: the Tom Thomson estate, the Lismer estate, the Harris estate, the Casson estate and the Johnston estate. Among the legion of donors who did not belong to the Group of Seven, Colonel R.S. McLaughlin's gift to the gallery of the entire collection of Clarence Gagnon's 54 mixed-media illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine-the novel was written by Louis Hémon-makes a high point in the McMichael acquisitions. It took Gagnon seven years to produce these gems of Quebec pioneer life, and although they are derived from French-Canadian farm life, they have a universality in which, in general, Canadian history is represented and they also represent the pioneer tenacity which built Canada. At least one half of the present acquisitions at the McMichael gallery have been acquired by or through donations, donations which were made in good faith that they would remain in their present setting in perpetuity.

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I believe that the Ontario government has the responsibility to respect and protect the generosity of the donors who have helped to build one of the most unique art collections in Canada.

I will conclude my remarks with a quotation from the 1979 McMichael catalogue: "The wealth of Canadian art treasures that form the McMichael Canadian collection is due largely to those who have generously given their cherished works of art. They were willing to share these with all Canadians and, in so doing, have placed this wider interest above their own personal pride and pleasure of ownership."

Finally, in closing, let me leave you with a question: Is it ethical to sell, auction or give away artifacts for which people have received tax benefits in the expectation that they would remain at the McMichael gallery forever?

The Chair: You've actually left us about six minutes, so we have time for three two-minute segments, starting with the Liberals.

Ms Di Cocco: Ms Mastin, thank you for your presentation. I have two questions for you. One is, do you believe that this bill is in keeping-in my submission, I have stated that I believe this bill is a breach of trust to the donors in Ontario. That's been my position. I am just asking you, do you think that it is ethical to go back and say "Well, the collection was of 150 plus 38 pieces"-to return and kind of discount this whole issue of the donors who have been contributing to that gallery over the last 35 years?

Ms Mastin: No, I don't think it is ethical to return or to sell to auction paintings that have been given to the gallery. I think it is absolutely necessary that the donors should be consulted as to whether or not they are agreeable to that process.

Ms Di Cocco: For the record, there were 327 individual donors and 15 organizational donors that have donated over $13.5 million over the last 35 years, just as a point of reference.

I have a letter from a donor who wrote to me and she has said that, because of this bill, she is not going to renew her membership and she is going to change her will, in which she was going to donate to the gallery. Again, this whole issue of trust is, I think, what this bill is about. I believe it's eroding the trust of the art donors in this province-and the Gardiner legacy, a private legacy that was left to this government of Ontario. He provided a $16-million gift plus endowments, millions of dollars of endowments, and it was turned over to the province of Ontario.

I guess what I am asking you is, should the McMichael Canadian art collection, in your estimation, remain in the public domain as is? Is that your view? Or should it be returned, or change the whole process of governance, the way this bill is doing?

Ms Mastin: That's a very difficult question to answer on the spur of the moment. I think that the collection is absolutely and positively unique. I think that the original gift to the province which the McMichaels made set a ball rolling, you might say, that would perpetuate that generosity of spirit.

I also think that you have to consider a gallery's objectives and also the attendance, which is part of a gallery's process. You just cannot say-certainly I can't say off the top of my head-whether it should remain or it shouldn't remain intact. But I do think there are two sides to the story. I can certainly see the the McMichaels' position. I think the whole process has strayed from the intent of the original bill, but I also think that the province-I mean we have this responsibility to the donors. You have to put yourself in the position of the donors. How would you feel if you had donated literally thousands of dollars worth of paintings to the gallery? I cannot answer your question.

The Chair: In your attempt to answer, we have unfortunately used up all of the time. So to the other parties, we'll have to make it up in the next go-round. Thank you very much for taking the time to come down and make a presentation. We appreciate it very much.

JOHN MACEACHERN

The Chair: The next presentation will be from Mr John MacEachern. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Mr John A. MacEachern: Good afternoon, Mr Chairman, honourable members. I have known Robert and Signe McMichael since I was a young boy, as my parents and the McMichaels were friends. I was raised in Kleinburg when it was a farming community and attended the village's two-room school. My parents occasionally socialized with the McMichaels and, as I tagged along, I would wander about their home and look at all the paintings. I was thrilled, as I recognized so many of the scenes since I went to summer camp on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park.

My mother and Janet Berton started a tearoom called the Doctor's House in 1967 to serve the increasing number of visitors to Kleinburg and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. I took it over in 1973, expanded it into a full-service restaurant and operated it until I sold it in 1992. I talked to literally tens of thousands of guests from Austria, Australia, Russia, Japan and from all over the world. For some reason, it seemed to me the Dutch came in more numbers than any other country. We were just inundated with people from the Netherlands. Premiers, Prime Ministers and dignitaries from all walks of life, whether it was the entertainment field, politics or sports, and even royalty, crossed my doorstep. I would have loved to have thought they came to the restaurant for our great cuisine, but let's face it, as good as our food was, the McMichael was the big draw to Kleinburg.

We were on the spouses' program for almost every convention that came to Toronto: a visit to the McMichael collection and lunch at the Doctor's House, or vice versa. Our record was nine bus tours in one day, and it was not uncommon to have four or five a day. The comments re the McMichaels flowed daily about the magnificent grounds, the beautiful log buildings and how they were situated, the views from the massive windows and how they rivalled the paintings. People got a true picture of Canada and what a magnificent country we have through the eyes of a handful of artists known as the Group of Seven and their contemporaries.

These were collected by a man and woman who had a dream to preserve these paintings for generations to come as part of Canada's heritage as they gave their land and beloved Tapawingo and their prize collection to the province. I kid you not when I tell you that people from all over the world were in awe of this couple. I would have people come into the restaurant and say, "We actually met Mr McMichael. He was out picking up some paper off the grounds. What a wonderful man he is." They were just in awe.

I myself was so totally impressed by what the McMichaels created and so believed in their dream that I persuaded my mother-in-law, the late Mrs Patricia Sims, to donate an original Lawren Harris which she had just inherited from her recently deceased sister, Helen O'Reilly. By the way, since the renovations in l982, this painting, to my knowledge, has never been shown publicly. I've asked many times and have had answers like, "We have too many of the Group of Seven here. It's in the vault."

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Then it was announced in 1980 or so that the gallery would be closed for two years for renovations and the McMichaels would have to leave. Staff at the McMichael started taking sides and most were hedging their bets that the government would win. Innuendoes, lies and slurs on the McMichaels' characters were whispered about the village and used by government bureaucrats in the press as excuses for their actions.

For the past 20 years, senior management at the collection were never generous nor kind with their praise of the McMichaels. I recall having numerous discussions with Michael Bell and Barbara Tyler, both past directors of the collection, as I personally had to defend the McMichaels and their gift. I have also written a number of letters to the editor decrying the direction the collection has taken.

Three days after the announcement of the closing, I received 26 registered letters from my bank calling in my loan. Within two weeks, I had over $160,000 worth of cancellations from bus tours. I cut my staff from 24 to eight, but we survived. However, the people never returned to Kleinburg in the same numbers as in previous years. I have been told that the McMichael Canadian Art Collection was one of the leading galleries in the country in attendance, with the lowest operating cost. I doubt this can be said today.

I say to my friends Paul Reinhardt and Mr Marchese, if you restore that gallery back to what it was, hordes and hordes of people will come back to Kleinburg. I understand it's losing a lot of money now and its attendance is down, and that's because of the direction it's taking now. The collection has changed. It has allowed pieces which are not at all representative of the gift, the terms and conditions of the gift or the spirit of the gift which Robert and Signe McMichael gave to the province and the people of Ontario.

What does a rusted piece of sculpture spelling out the word "Babylon," with a hyena standing on top of one of those letters, greeting people at the entrance have to do with Canoe Lake, Algoma, Lake Superior or Emily Carr's haunting collection of northwest Indian totem poles? Nor do I know how three bases from a Cleveland Indians' baseball game and a New York Yankees' hat fit in with the magnificent scenes from Quebec's North Shore or Harris's Mount Lefroy.

The insidious innuendoes are starting all over again. Before you, there is a letter sent out by the McMichael volunteer committee to all of the art sale participants which accompanied a copy of Bill 112. You will see the demeaning little handwritten comments trying to degrade the value of the McMichaels' original gift: "197 paintings," "less than 200 paintings," "only 14 acres" etc. They have stated falsehoods in their letter by saying, "The amended legislation does not include the First Nations, Inuit or any living artist." In fact, Bill 112 clearly states in section 4.1 that the advisory committee may make recommendations for acquisitions and does not restrict them from choosing First Nations, Inuit or any living artist. In fact, section 4.1(2)(e) of the bill states that the function of the art advisory committee is "to designate artists who have made contributions to the development of Canadian art for the purpose of including their artworks and objects and related documentary material in the collection."

These volunteers were originally named Friends of McMichael, but as they say, with friends like these, who needs enemies? And how is one of Canada's most philanthropic couples supposed to fight such small-minded people? Will they never stop until they have totally destroyed the McMichaels? I will never understand the mean-spiritedness of some people and what these volunteers hope to gain by their actions. I don't know.

I should mention here that I am also an artist; not a great artist, but I have sold work at the McMichael autumn art sale, so I know a little bit of what I speak.

Almost every city around the world has a gallery showing the art of today, modern art: Jello in the bathtub, rotting steaks on a dress form, dirty underwear on a bedpost, paintings by monkeys etc. Canada is well served by many galleries in this area, such as the National Gallery in Ottawa or the AGO, but no one has the McMichael. The experience, the feel, the art of our magnificent country is totally captured in this collection.

I respectfully request that you pass this bill, which will bring the McMichaels and their vision and the people back to Kleinburg to share and rejoice in our art and our land. Thank you for allowing me to appear before you.

The Chair: That leaves us about two minutes. This time, Mr Marchese.

Mr Marchese: Mr MacEachern, thanks for your presentation. I have two quick questions, at least one quicker than the other. Do you really believe that by introducing Bill 112 we will solve the deficit problems the McMichael has? That's the claim the government makes.

Mr MacEachern: It will certainly go a long, long way toward that, because the visitors who come to Toronto want to see something Canadian.

Mr Marchese: I understand that.

Mr MacEachern: They will come out to Kleinburg. The people themselves coming there will increase the attendance.

Mr Marchese: Well, I'm doubtful. But I want to raise another point with you. I looked at the mandate from 1965 on. The mandate in 1965 is limited to the Group of Seven and three other named artists plus others designated by the advisory committee "who have made a contribution to the development of Canadian art."

In 1972, Mr McMichael becomes a trustee for life and is also named the director and is on salary, and the mandate is changed while he's there to specify that all artworks must not be inconsistent with the general character of the collection when the gallery was created in 1965.

In 1982, the mandate changes again but Mr McMichael is still here. It says "and work by other artists who have made a contribution to the development of Canadian art and whose work and objects will be consistent with the general character of the collection."

The point I'm making with all of these mandate changes is that the McMichaels have always been there, agreeing with these changes, and I am assuming that much of what we have there since the beginning has evolved and they have agreed to that, and so we have now the McMichael gallery, which represents a whole lot of other people, which I think has been good for the gallery.

Mr MacEachern: I disagree with you. I think the McMichaels were moved out of their home. They were fighting. They had directors there that were putting their own views forward and not the views of the McMichaels. What was your other point?

Mr Marchese: That the mandate has, yes, changed but-

Mr MacEachern: Totally changed.

Mr Marchese: Right. But the McMichaels have been on that board from the beginning.

Mr MacEachern: Sure they've been on the board, but how can you fight eight other members or whoever is on there, when there's only two of them?

The Chair: With that, Mr MacEachern-

Mr MacEachern: There's a lot of politicking going on there, sir, and a lot of empire-building. Now you know where your money is going. It's the empire-building that has happened in that gallery. I remember the days when if a receptionist had to take a lunch break, Mrs McMichael would fill in and take over the telephones. I know that security in that gallery was two Labrador retrievers with the intercom system on at night, and nothing was stolen. The dogs would bark and wake up the McMichaels.

The Chair: Mr MacEachern, thank you very much for coming down and bringing that local perspective.

Mr MacEachern: Thank you for having me.

ONTARIO MUSEUM ASSOCIATION

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from the Ontario Museum Association. Good afternoon. Welcome to the committee. Perhaps you could introduce yourselves for the purpose of Hansard.

Ms Marie Lalonde: Yes, thank you, Mr Chairman. Our thanks to the committee for allowing us to appear before the committee this afternoon and express our concerns. I'm Marie Lalonde. I'm the executive director of the Ontario Museum Association, l'Association des musées de l'Ontario, and with me is Barry Lord, a corporate member of the OMA, an internationally recognized authority on museum standards and professional practice.

The Ontario Museum Association has more than 1,000 members that span across the province in communities large and small. Collectively, Ontario museums spend about $376 million contributing significantly to community life and tourism in this province. Our success is due in large part to the constructive relationships that we have had with governments at all levels.

Upon the introduction of Bill 112, the OMA made its concerns known to the Ontario government and requested an open dialogue with the Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation. I am pleased to report that our president, Marilynn Havelka, and I did meet with Minister Johns earlier this month to engage in an open dialogue on Bill 112. At this time, I would like to table the OMA's follow-up letter to Minister Johns. As we stated at that meeting, the health and well-being of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection is our common goal. Our concerns with Bill 112 stem from our goal of ensuring that internationally recognized museum standards, which Ontario has played a key role in advancing, are followed for this nationally treasured art collection.

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Because the OMA believes that this legislation needs to be considered in the light of international museum standards of governance and collections policy, we have asked one of our corporate members, Barry Lord, who is vice-president of Lord Cultural Resources Planning and Management, to speak briefly to you today. Lord Cultural Resources Planning and Management is the world's leading museum planning company, which is also the world's largest, with its international headquarters in Toronto and offices in London, England, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Hong Kong.

With about 40 museum professionals, mostly here in Ontario, Lord has completed over 900 museum planning projects in 15 countries on four continents. Much of their work is also done and carried out in Ontario, I'd like to add. Their clients include such major museums worldwide as the National Gallery in London, England, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art-and I can go on but I won't. Barry and his wife, Gail, who is the president of the company, are also well-known for their books such as the Manual of Museum Management and the Manual of Museum Planning, which are published by the Stationery Office in London, England, and by Altamira Press in California and are used in museum studies programs in graduate schools at universities around the world.

We have asked Barry, who brings 50 years of experience in the museum field-

Mr Barry Lord: Forty.

Ms Lalonde: Forty?-to join us here today on a pro bono basis to contribute the viewpoint of an internationally established Canadian private sector firm that is familiar with museum standards and best practice in governance and policies around the world.

Mr Lord: That's a marvellous introduction, except it's 40 years, not 50. I hasten to say that I started as an undergraduate, so I got started early. I have a written presentation here if the clerk wants to distribute it, perhaps; sorry to bother you.

Good afternoon, Mr Chairman, Madam Vice-Chair, members of the standing committee and Minister. In these few minutes, I thought it would be useful to review Bill 112 in terms of its ability to realize the government's aims in introducing it. Briefly, I appreciate the government's objectives, but I do not think that Bill 112 is going to be either efficient or particularly effective in achieving them.

The first objective is the government's concern with a cumulative $1.6-million deficit. This is certainly a concern that we can all appreciate and share. However, from our international experience as a company dealing with that kind of problem, we would have to say that this legislation will not help, and is likely to be counterproductive. Our firm has been involved in successful resolutions of comparable problems, for example, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where our recommendations several years ago projected the level of government support at about halfway between the level that was proposed by the city of Philadelphia and the level that the museum felt it needed, but only because we put the emphasis on enabling the museum to strengthen its revenue-generating methods. Unfortunately, Bill 112 does not free up the McMichael collection to be more entrepreneurial but binds it tighter to government oversight of its operations. So the legislation appears to be heading in the wrong direction, based on our experience.

In particular, I would suggest that there is no evidence that returning the mandate to the original focus on the Group of Seven and their contemporaries will help the McMichael to overcome its deficit. On the contrary, the whole direction of international museum practice at present is to develop exhibitions that relate art history to the present day. Even London's National Gallery, for instance, which has been a client of ours, whose collecting mandate ends in the 19th century, has recently had great success in commissioning contemporary British artists to create contemporary works of art inspired by its Old Masters collection. The Tate Gallery in London has now become two separate museums, Tate Britain and Tate Modern-both have been our clients-precisely in order to be able to mix and match the contemporary with the historical in thematic displays that are based on the content of the works of art. This is in fact the contemporary international direction, to focus on the content of works of art rather than their art historical period. So there is plenty of opportunity for that.

The government's other objective, to honour previous commitments to the original donor, is also understandable, but again based on our experience I would suggest that Bill 112 is likely to prove problematic, for several good reasons.

First, it sets a precedent of placing donors on the boards of institutions and gives them direct control of the cultural content of the institution. I know the minister has said that this is an exceptional case, and I appreciate that, but the precedent is one that other donors may wish to emulate at other institutions, so the government may be inviting future difficulties of that kind. Needless to say, this role for donors does not accord with international practice, where "no strings attached" is the standing rule that most donors accept, and problems in this area might not be confined to individuals but might also be involved with sponsoring corporations as well.

Second, in making the board subject to ministerial approval for either three years or until the collection is rationalized, another precedent is established which violates the arm's-length relationship and replaces it with direct government supervision. Again, I appreciate that this is seen to be temporary and specific to this case only, but it is contrary to international museum practice and in our experience is likely to discourage private donors, who will have the impression that this is an entirely government-funded institution and therefore does not need their support.

Third, the legislation establishes a non-professional committee, called the art advisory committee, that would actually have direct responsibility for acquisitions, deaccessioning, exhibitions and display-not only collections but also exhibitions-and it's direct responsibility. It's not advisory but it's governing, as we would make the distinction. This of course is completely opposed to professional practice elsewhere.

One of its most serious disadvantages would be the very great difficulty it would present for the McMichael to be able to recruit or keep good professional staff. Museum directors and curators of the stature that the McMichael requires will not be attracted to an institution in which collection development and exhibitions are in the hands of non-professionals. Nor will other museums be attracted to lend individual works or exhibitions to such an institution. It is a vicious world, the world of lending exhibitions and lending works of art. Curators, directors and so on will look for any reason not to give, and this will be a very good one. They will expect decision-making to be done by professionals of equivalent stature to themselves.

This is especially serious for the McMichael deficit, since it means that the institution will have greater difficulty in participating in the national and international world of exhibitions, which depend on close co-operation among professionals. It's through such exhibitions that some kind of progress on the deficit could be made.

Fourth, we have to observe that the proposed disposal of collections, or deaccessioning as it's called in the museum field, is a highly challenging process. We have been involved in advising professional museums on the deaccessioning process. It is very difficult, not merely in terms of professional museum standards but also legally and even ethically. The museums associations of Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Ontario all have policies cautioning against it and require that if it is done at all, it must be done by professionals following a highly explicit code of conduct. One of the very serious reasons for this, quite aside from those of the museum profession, is the concern with the legal ramifications of both federal and provincial tax forgiveness that has been extended to donors in the past. This tax forgiveness was at a value established at the time of the donation. Legally, giving or trading it away can only be done within the public sector since sales will necessarily be at a higher or lower value, in either case creating legal and financial problems.

The safest procedure with all donated works of art is simply to transfer them to other institutions. I speak as somebody who tried to work out a deaccessioning policy for an institution and it was extremely difficult. However, I caution that the operating costs associated with their upkeep will go with them, so that there is no net saving if they are transferred to other institutions that are recipients of provincial support. Even then there is a risk of violating the original donors' intentions, since they or their heirs may not wish their gifts to go to other institutions.

One of the most serious results of deaccessions in our experience is their effect on donor confidence. Donors have given works of art to the McMichael as a public institution on the understanding they would remain there. Some are bequests or given in honour of persons no longer living. If donors lose confidence in such arrangements, they are likely to be unwilling to entrust future donations to the institution. So it's a Catch-22: the government's wish to honour one set of commitments to a donor in the past will result in dishonouring many others.

In practice, the only deaccessioned items that could be sold, in our experience, having gone through deaccessioning policies with institutions, are those that were purchased by the McMichael collection. But here we encounter the very serious implications for living Canadian artists and/or their dealers, whose prices will be devalued when it is learned that a major public institution is selling off their works as if they were unworthy. This would expose the institution, and the government, since the board and its deaccessioning is to be approved by the minister, to possible legal action by the affected artists and their dealers for devaluation of their works.

This is, I would say, an almost unavoidable result, even if the works are sold slowly and in small numbers. If they're sold in large numbers at once, the result would be even more catastrophic. Therefore, the government would be at risk of that kind of legal action. I don't know how it work out legally, but it would be a problem.

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Finally, I should point out, as our book The Manual of Museum Management does, that museum boards should be concerned with policy, not the actual selection or disposal of works of art or the choice of exhibitions. One of the things we have learned again and again throughout the world in this kind of institution is that when boards are not doing policy, because they're doing something else, because they're actually operating, nobody is doing policy. Where boards violate this principle, policy is neglected, and the result is that without policy to steer by, the institution becomes more and more dependent, not less, on its governing authority, which in this case will be the provincial government.

Our experience would therefore suggest that Bill 112 will result in making the McMichael collection more and more dependent on government, not more independent. This is contrary to the direction of the present government, as I understand it, and it's also contrary to the entire international trend of museum management.

For all these reasons I would urge that the government reconsider Bill 112, since it appears to us, by our experience, to be very likely to be counterproductive in achieving the government's own aims. Thank you for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you very much, both of you. We've been a little indulgent, recognizing, with the typed presentation, the end was coming. But we've gone over time. I want to thank you very much for making your presentation before us here today. We appreciate it.

GEORGE MCLEAN

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from Mr George McLean. Good afternoon, Mr McLean. Welcome to the committee.

Mr George McLean: Thank you for having me. I'm a member of the McMichael board and have been for over three years now. I'm a professional artist, a freelancer. I have never made my living from government grants. The fact is, I've made more money than I ever thought was in this whole wide world as a freelancer.

The reason I agreed to sit on the board of the McMichael was because I always thought that the McMichael was the one public visual art institution that featured representational art. I would never have agreed to sit on the board at the AGO, because I think a lot of the stuff they buy isn't worth the time of day.

The public galleries tend to buy works as if they were putting these collections together for themselves and not for the public. A great number of the well-known contemporary artists not only never receive grants, are not eligible for them, could never get a grant; they can't even get a show at the big galleries in the country. Bob Bateman-I've used this before-is the most famous artist that Canada has ever produced. There's not one single major institution in this country that has any of his work. Artists tend to become well-known in their lifetimes, not after they're dead. Van Gogh was maybe an exception to the rule, but it's a rare exception.

Before I came on the board I knew no one on the board. I didn't even know the McMichaels, never met them. I sat on the art acquisitions committee, often abstaining from a vote because I thought the stuff was so inappropriate, and yet I felt somewhat intimidated because I'd never sat on a board before. I didn't know what the right protocol was. But all the while I noticed that the McMichaels were treated like pariahs. "They're old folks now." It just ain't polite. Not only that, but the other consideration I've had is that if it weren't for the McMichaels, there wouldn't be a McMichael gallery. It's that elementary. If you want to know what the focus of that gallery was intended to be, just ask them. It's that easy. I can't understand-well, I can, sort of, and I'll get into that. It looks to me like all the public institutions want to look the same. We have a contemporary wing at the Art Gallery of Ontario. You could fire a cannon through that thing and never hit a work of art or a visitor either, this space that has been put together by the Canadian arts council or whatever they call themselves. Without those councils, none of these artists could survive-and at the McMichael.

I heard the gentleman who ran the restaurant in Kleinburg. I totally agree with him that if you bring shows to the McMichael that people want to see, people will come to that gallery. I absolutely believe it and I can prove it by some of the galleries I show in myself. I could name a bunch, but we just don't have time. It seems to me that this McMichael dispute is really not about art or artists. It's about who is going to control the money that the government spends; that's what it is all about. These people from these museum associations have enormous clout, because they're a group. They are far stronger than the likes of me, because I'm just one guy and, frankly, I'm a freelancer and couldn't care less what they think. I don't need them to make a living. I don't care if I'm in the museum. Posterity is for dead people. All I want to do is keep making my paintings.

I can tell you that on several occasions I finally spoke up. First of all, someone just said that you shouldn't have people on the board who are donors. That was commonplace at the McMichael gallery, including the ex-CEO. She received a tax credit for a piece she donated. They were buying pieces from someone who sat on the art acquisitions committee. Is that what they mean by, "You shouldn't have these people on the board"? I agree with that totally. If somebody had asked me if they could buy one of my paintings, I would have said, "Sure, if I'm not on the board. I'd be glad to resign, by the way, so you can buy a piece."

We heard time and time again the projections for the future, and time and time again those projections were way off the money, and the deficit started to grow. I keep hearing about this deficit of $1.6 million; it's $2.3 million.

They talk about government intervention in the museums. Governments do intervene in the visual arts museums. They give public grants to individual artists. I don't know of any representational painter who receives grants. There may be some, but I don't know them. The direction that those grants have taken is that they fund only non-objective art, and in that way the government is absolutely determining which way the art is going to go. If they're not supposed to interfere, then they should remove the sales tax, say, from fine art, and give every artist the same opportunity. They should stop giving these outrageous grants to individuals who are not really professionals at all.

I could go on with some of the shows that the gallery had proposed. One was Hockey and the Art of being Canadian, a whole lot of hockey artifacts. I said, "There's a Hockey Hall of Fame. Why would we have hockey artifacts in an art gallery?" Then there was a hell of a hue and cry about that. They bought an installation of three wolves. It cost over $50,000. There was a bus stop that went with it with a picture of a raven in it. By the way, I paint animals; that's my specialty. That's what I do for my livelihood. This wolf installation: they didn't look like wolves. It was badly done. I said that. Again, I could never make a point.

What I'm saying is, these people who say they know how to run the gallery-this gallery has been run by the very people who are now putting up all the fuss. This gallery has been run for 11 years by those same people. The McMichaels have had very little hand in that, let me tell you that, because I've been on the board. They've always been shut up, just brushed aside. But they took 11 years to get themselves into $2.3 million worth of debt. Talk about government interference-I think there wasn't enough of it. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr McLean. That gives us about two minutes. This time the questioning would be the government.

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Mrs Elliott: Thank you, Mr McLean. You've raised some very interesting points, particularly that the deficit is now $2.3 million.

In the proposed bill we say, "The board shall ensure that the collection reflects the cultural heritage of Canada and is comprised of artworks and objects and related documentary materials created by or about" the Group of Seven "and other artists who have been designated by the art advisory committee ... for their contributions to the development of Canada art."

We have heard from the previous speaker that a specific collection mandate in fact would not work and we would see revenues fall at the McMichael. We heard from an earlier speaker who said exactly the opposite: that returning, as you're suggesting, the McMichael to the spirit of its original intent and focus on the Group of Seven would cause it to thrive.

Do you think, if the bill passes as we are proposing, where its focus will be again on the Group of Seven and the Canadian art heritage, that this gallery would thrive?

Mr McLean: Let me put it this way: I've been to two shows this summer. One was in Wausau, Wisconsin, and another one was out in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Both of these galleries specialize in the sort of work I do. They pack those places. In Teton county, the richest county in the United States, believe me, they pack that place. People fly in there from far and wide, pay huge high prices for the hotels and all the facilities around there. They have huge donations, because people like to give their money to organizations that they relate to.

The other thing is, we just had the annual ball, the Woodchoppers' Ball. A lot of the people who used to come to it weren't at it this time. So what? There are other people around who have other ideas about how galleries should be run, and they've got money too. My clients all have a lot of money. I don't think it would hurt the gallery in the slightest.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr McLean. We appreciate the perspective that you brought here today.

PAT FAIRHEAD

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from Pat Fairhead. Good afternoon, Ms Fairhead. Welcome to the committee. The floor is yours.

Ms Pat Fairhead: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As you don't know me and I don't see any of my work in this room, I'd better introduce myself. I'm a full-time painter. I've been making my living from the sale of my work for something like 30 years, at least.

My education is at the Ontario College of Art. I have a master's degree in education and in the arts. I am a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, the Ontario Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, and the renowned Arts and Letters Club-the original eighters and the time that the group spent there.

The passion for my work stemmed in part from the Group of Seven. I too have paddled, kayaked, and climbed this country and the Arctic many times. My work is very large and is inspired by the Canadian wilderness.

I went to Tapawingo years ago, on the very first AGO tour of Canadian art in country houses, and there I met the McMichaels before they started to build. I was thrilled. The dining room was full of David Milne and some enormous pieces of Inuit sculpture. I enjoyed myself and their very gracious hospitality. I went often, and as Bob and Signe enlarged and expanded the gallery space over the years, the collection has grown to show the work of contemporary Canadians. It is vital for the collection to keep up with and show what is being done by Canadian painters. It is so exciting to go in and see where we have been, where we are now, and where we're going.

The McMichael collection of Canadian art is the only public gallery dedicated exclusively to Canadian art in all this country. It must be kept up to date for all of us who gain inspiration and education, and to show the world our Canadian art. It is absolutely unique.

I remember Carmichael, a member of the Group of Seven; his daughter just spoke. He was my teacher at the Ontario College of Art. Again and again he said to us, "Above all, be original." He inspired us to think, to analyze, and to invent new ways of making art, and all the group did that. They showed us our country for the first time through their eyes: strong, vibrant and alive-and we were shocked. The critics and everyone absolutely said it was trash, it was junk and no one would look at it, and the public screamed blue bloody murder.

So, here we are. Bob and Signe, years ago, saw the significance of the group and started to buy when they themselves were just struggling along. They were truly inspired and built the nucleus of this extremely important place, then gave it to the Ontario people and were handsomely rewarded.

Now we are experiencing the same damned shock of the new art of contemporary work, and the very same response as to the Group of Seven 70 years ago. It happens every time. We learn by seeing, we learn by familiarity and also the educational component the gallery provides. Without this gallery moving with and ahead of its time, it will become a morgue and a museum. It will be dead.

The group is and always will be the hot core that still vibrates. It is our responsibility-all of us-to continue their heritage. We must keep this showplace of Canadian art in the hands of professional administrators and curators. To return it to the helm of the McMichaels, pursuant to draft Bill 112, it becomes a personal collection and will, in fact, not reflect what has happened and is now happening in exciting and contemporary painting.

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel betrayed by what this draft act imposes on what has been a magnificent and highly regarded Ontario gallery. We are all famous for it.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That affords us time for questioning. This time it will be the Liberals.

Mr Levac: As a young student going to high school I visited the McMichael, and probably one of the most important things our art teacher instilled in us was the concept of the Canadian identity. Even then, when I was looking at some of the pieces, I couldn't see the relationship between what Harris did in some of his latter works and the landscape. Having said that, I've visited other art galleries since that time, in my continued studies in art, and I've always found your statement about the shock or the comment of artworks.

In your opinion would this bill, in effect, take us backwards in terms of we as a people understanding art and its challenge to us to think outside the box?

Ms Fairhead: Absolutely true. I agree with you entirely.

Mr Levac: Thank you.

The Chair: Ms Di Cocco.

Ms Di Cocco: My biggest concern is that this is a public gallery. We seem to be forgetting this. We seem to forget that this is a crown corporation, and I thank you for your insight.

What would you suggest to this committee that we should do with regard to this gallery?

Ms Fairhead: Thank you; I'm flattered. I would absolutely like to see it continue and also keep showing contemporary art. I think it's absolutely a necessity. This is the only Canadian art gallery.

As far as the deficit is concerned, art galleries have never made money. They've usually been free. People will pay $150 for a hockey ticket. If you charge them $10 for a gallery-art is part of our education; we learned some in school, although it is going now, unfortunately. When we to go to a gallery, we don't expect to pay anything. Galleries, mostly on the initiative of Europe, are supported mostly by government and by private donations. This is our culture. We expect to have them there and we don't expect to pay very much for them.

Ms Di Cocco: I see this bill as very aggressive, so you're talking to the converted here. When it comes to the background, the court case and the struggles, do you think that if we just stabilized-we went through a court action in 1997, I think, and there's always been conflict on the board. Do you think the cause of the financial problems-I agree with you that it's sort of innate in art galleries, etc. Do you think that if we could stop that struggle of who is controlling what and move forward in the governance model that's been set out by international standards and keep it that way, maybe that might help to solve the crisis?

Ms Fairhead: Apparently the infighting has been extremely damaging. But boards have to learn how to operate. They have to have a clear mandate and they have to have support, otherwise they don't work.

The Chair: Thank you very much for bringing your professional perspective before us here today.

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MARY MCARTHUR

The Chair: Our next presentation will be from Ms Mary McArthur. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Mary McArthur: My name is Mary McArthur. I am 34 years old, and although I am probably the youngest person in this room, I have lived my entire life in Ontario.

I became aware of the situation at the McMichael collection, and of Bill 112, through discussions with the McMicheals, who had been our neighbours in Belfountain until recently when my husband and I moved to Toronto.

The goal of my presentation today is to present my feelings, which I believe are representative of regular Ontarians. Like most people living in this province, I am neither an art critic nor an avid collector. Like most Ontarians, I have visited and enjoyed the McMichael collection on numerous occasions.

Quite frankly, I support Bill 112 for three reasons. First, the province should respect the terms and conditions of the deal it made with the McMichaels in 1965. We need to remember the McMichaels gave as a gift this extremely valuable collection of Canadian art, their home and 14 acres of land to the province of Ontario. In return, the province made an agreement with the McMichaels.

I believe, very simply, that a deal is a deal. Can any of you put yourselves in their shoes for a moment and imagine giving your entire life's work to the province? Can you then imagine having the agreement that underpinned that gift disregarded in years to come? It is only right and logical that the original agreement be respected.

If this original agreement is not respected, then every Ontarian should rightly question the integrity of the province in any other agreement it strikes with its residents.

The second reason I support Bill 112 is that the province must restore the confidence of future benefactors, thus ensuring that future gifts will be given. What will inspire me and other Ontarians to be as generous with our assets in future years as the McMichaels have been? The province must be willing to respect the agreements it makes with its benefactors, or why will anyone give anything to the province in the future? In this state of affairs, the residents of the province will be the losers.

The third reason I support Bill 112 is that it will allow the collection to be returned to its original focus. When I visit the McMichael gallery, I see a gallery that lacks focus. When I read about the financial affairs of the gallery, I see a gallery that isn't effectively marketing or administering itself.

Bill 112 is a wonderful opportunity for the gallery to rededicate itself to a clear, focused mission and for the gallery to excel in that mission. It is time for the gallery to put its lacklustre and unfocused recent past behind it.

The original agreement in 1965, which created the McMichael collection, promised that the collection would be made up of works by Canada's Group of Seven artists and their contemporaries. Seven years later, in 1972, Bill 216 came into effect. It included a very important section, that being section 8(b), which stated the following:

"The corporation may expend, administer or dispose of any such money or property in furtherance of its objects subject to the terms, if any, upon which such money or property was given, granted, bequeathed, leased or otherwise acquired by the corporation."

In 1989, the then Liberal government threw out this entire section. It was the removal of this section which led the gallery to become unfocused. It is time for the gallery to become focused again. The gallery must be managed with a clear focus and a clear mandate, and Bill l12 will allow this to happen.

If appropriately mandated and led, the McMichael gallery can be a world leader and a major asset for the people of Ontario. My challenge to this committee is that it ensure that this opportunity is seized and a focused, energized McMichael gallery returns to what it does well: exhibiting the work of the Group of Seven and associated artists, and other art that is relevant to that mission, which was envisaged in the 1965 agreement between the province and the McMichaels.

The Chair: That leaves us time for questioning. In this rotation, we'll start with Mr Marchese.

Mr Marchese: Thank you for your presentation. A couple of questions. Did you have the chance to listen to the presentation made by the Ontario Museum Association, including Ms Fairhead and possibly Professor Joyce Zemans?

Ms McArthur: Yes, I did.

Mr Marchese: Do you have any reaction to what they said?

Ms McArthur: In terms of what? Can you be more specific with your question?

Mr Marchese: There are so many questions they've all raised. Pick one.

Ms McArthur: Let me make a couple points that I tried to make in my presentation.

Mr Marchese: In terms of your sense of what they said and your reaction to them. If not, I'll go to other questions, because I have a few others.

Ms McArthur: I have a couple of reactions. I'm not sure if it was stated by them or the lady that came after them, but they're basically saying that Canadian art must continue to be displayed. My comment to that is: why at the McMichael? Modern contemporary art isn't best shown in a log cabin in the woods; the Group of Seven is best shown there. Modern contemporary art can easily be shown at the AGO.

Mr Marchese: I understand that, too. They said a lot more than that.

Ms McArthur: Sorry. There's too much.

Mr Marchese: I don't want to encapsulate what they said because I've only got two minutes.

A lot has happened since 1965, and as much as you want to return to the original focus, I'm not sure how we deal with a lot of the questions that have been raised about decommissioning and whether such a committee should be able to do that. It's an advisory committee, but they have the power to be able to sell, to decide what gets disposed of and so on. That presents a whole lot of problems in terms of the other people who have donated since 1965. As much as you might have a problem about the original deal as you understand it versus what all the others have done, are you not worried about the other donors and their contribution and what it means or its implications?

Ms McArthur: No, I'm not worried, quite honestly. It might be difficult to do, to dispose of some of the recent gifts that have been given. Fine, it might be a logistical hassle, but you know what? The thing is off focus, plain and simple. If I were an operator of a store that was focused on selling clothing, for example, and I started to sell hardware, do you think I'd be in business for long? Do you think I'd be profitable? I don't think so.

Mr Marchese: I hear where you're going. The 1965 mandate is limited to the Group of Seven and three other named artists plus others designated by the advisory committee who have made contributions to the development of Canadian art. That was the deal they had in 1965, which clearly suggests to me that in addition to the Group of Seven, it includes others who have made contributions to the development of Canadian art. That's part of the original deal. What do we do about that?

Ms McArthur: As I told you in the beginning, I am not an art historian or an art critic. I'm just a regular Ontarian and I know that thing is off focus. My whole point is, let's get the thing back in focus and deal with the hassle of disposing the things that don't fit the mandate.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms McArthur. I appreciate your coming before us here this afternoon.

Mrs Elliott: Don't we get a chance to ask a question?

The Chair: You're the next round.

ROBERT MCMICHAEL

The Chair: Speaking of the next round, up next we have Mr McMichael himself. Mr McMichael, feel free to join us at the witness table. Good afternoon. Welcome to the committee. Much has been said about you and now you have an opportunity to put the straight goods on the record.

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Mr Robert McMichael: After listening to these good words of several friends of the McMichael collection, there is little left for me to say except possibly to counter some of the questions that have been raised by Mr Marchese that are simply off base. They're just not correct and I would challenge them on any point.

One of the last points you made, and you attempted to embarrass Ms McArthur, was the fact that all these works were promised by the people to stay in the collection and all that kind of thing. Every gift ever given to the McMichael collection through its 35 years has had the clause that works can be disposed of as seen fit by the board of trustees. If you don't know this, then you'd better read the act and you'd better read the gift agreements that apply in that act.

Anyway, I didn't come to debate this; I want to discuss our position on it. In earlier years, most of the great artists in the collection could barely make a living. With the passage of time, their works have become nothing less than national icons. During the past year or so, paintings by Lawren Harris and Emily Carr have been sold at auction for more than $1 million each. No contemporary artist before them or since them has ever reached this point. It is an example of the quality of the work of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, and I stress "their contemporaries."

The advisory committee selected, in addition to 10 artists originally named, seven other artists, for a grand total of 17. Through the years, the collection has stayed within that mandate. Our chairman, Mr J. Allyn Taylor, and the board agreed completely that this was the right direction it should be going.

I want to point out here, too, that in those years, we had the highest attendance by far-in fact, double the present attendance-at Kleinburg. One year, in the last year of my reign, as they say, we had 286,000 people come to the gallery. It is about half that amount now. I'm afraid a good part of that has gone because the works that people came to see, the great works-and I mention they were not all $1-million works, but all of the Group of Seven works have gone into the hundreds of thousands of dollars now. They're not cheap things, but they've stood the test of time. That's what the whole story is about.

They've been the greatest artists that Canada has ever produced and, as such, we wanted to create a collection dedicated to them, along with their friends, Albert Robinson, J.W. Morrice, Clarence Gagnon, Thoreau MacDonald-seven people beyond those actually named. That was allowed for in the agreement, that the advisory committee would select other artists who have made major contributions to Canadian art.

The advisory committee, through those years up to 1982 when I stepped down, selected the works, and everything that is in that collection by those artists has skyrocketed in value, where a great number of the things that were accepted were largely given because people wanted tax receipts for them. I hate to be blunt about it, but that's exactly what it amounted to.

When we gave the collection-and I don't mind being very frank about this-Mr Robarts said to us, "Bob, is there a tax deal in here? I wanted to tell you about it. I know of no way that you could possibly get any benefit by giving this collection, this gallery and these lands to the province of Ontario." I said, "Thank you very much, Mr Robarts, but we'll go ahead anyway. We don't expect any tax relief." We never did.

Three years later, the government of Canada changed the rules and started giving donations to collectors as a deduction from their income tax. In our case, and I was just recently reviewing the thing, we received a grand total of approximately $85,000 in tax relief for a gift by that time-and I must stress again, the number keeps coming up as $195,000 or some such odd number. We kept on giving pictures through almost every year, certainly a majority of the years, from 1965 right through to the present, and we still gave this year. Those gifts have been valued at well over the $1-million mark, but we didn't do this for taxes, believe me, in the first case or in the later cases. I just wanted to stress this. I've broken away completely from what I had planned to say, but I simply had to express this.

I must also say that the deficit that has occurred in the gallery is a terrible embarrassment, simply because it was created by a management, and particularly a director, who just knew no end to the amount of expenditures. In fact, I must say, and I hate doing this but I must put it on the record, she drove her own salary up to a point higher than a cabinet minister. I can't make it any clearer than that. Is it any wonder we've got a deficit with that kind of management?

Fortunately, the present staff are starting to trim it back and cut back on costs, but it has been a terrible embarrassment to know that we could be so overspent by one or two people who called the shots, and even when they first gave us the estimates, they never broke it down by who exactly was getting what. They broke it down by departments, for example, the collections department, or the director's office, and so on. We never knew precisely what any of the salaries were, and I had asked for that many times at board, as had Mr McLean, but we never received that. To this date, we still haven't received a list of what the salaries are; we don't care about names, just the specific positions. I'm just pointing out that it has been a very sad embarrassment to us that this kind of money could be spent. In the years that we directed the collection, we never had a deficit of 10 cents. It was absolutely within the bounds of exactly what was allocated by the government and we lived within those bounds, and the collection, in spite of that, drew the highest attendance it has ever had.

Coming back to some of my other points here-sorry, I don't mean to be so carried away-in the earlier years most of the great artists in our collection could barely make a living. But with the passage of time, their works have become nothing less than national icons, as I said. During the past year or so, paintings by Harris and Carr have passed the $1-million mark.

I recall one day when A.Y. Jackson was living with us in our apartment at the McMichael collection. One of our attractive young lady guides who worked at the gallery spoke to A.Y. Jackson. She asked him, "How come a handsome man like you never married?" He responded, "When I had the inclination, I couldn't earn the money. By the time I had the money, I had lost the inclination." I think that says a lot about what the famous Group of Seven is now; but in their early days they had a very hard time.

Some of the most interesting family-founded art collections in the world have been born of a compelling enthusiasm for a particular period or kind of art. Material for such collections may be the work of one painter, one nation or one school of artists. The enthusiasm that founded the McMichael art collection was triggered by the art of a legendary Canadian, Tom Thomson, and his fellow painters in the Group of Seven, but there are a host of galleries that have been founded on this base, and they are enormously successful throughout the world. All of these galleries place an absolute limit on exactly what artists, in fact exactly what pictures-not just the artists, but exactly what pictures-will be in their collection. The famous Frick Collection in New York is an example of that, but there are all kinds of collections throughout America and Europe where this kind of thing prevails.

The McMichael was never intended to be a general art gallery, some place just to get people to hang pictures or keep up with the times; it was to carry the work of a period of Canadian art and a group of great painters, who I still believe are the greatest we have ever produced. As a matter of fact, if we were to ask any art dealer in Canada who would be the most highly ranked artists in Canada-in other words, with the idea that they would like to have them to sell to their clientele-I think invariably they would start with Tom Thomson, Emily Carr and the members of the Group of Seven-and David Milne of course. They would also add the great work of Clarence Gagnon, J. W. Morrice and the others our advisory committee brought into the collection. In other words, we approved it unanimously and stopped at a certain point, when we had reached 17 artists, much like these great galleries throughout the world that have been founded by other families.

At that point, for 10 years, until I stepped down, until I retired, stepping down as director, that is exactly where it stayed. We got marvellous additional pictures because people who had these wonderful things were willing to come forth and present them to the collection. There was no thought of a need for more pictures. We had more than we could hang, but we liked to rotate them. We liked to give the best works a regular chance to be shown at specific times. Just like Mr MacEachern-I remember well the picture his mother gave to the collection. It was a marvellous Lawren Harris. I don't know why it has never been up, but I know that a lot of things that are not in the same league as the Group of Seven, not even to be considered in the same breath as the Group of Seven-but I have to stress again that the collection wasn't built-and the word is "collection," not "gallery." Its incorporated name in the province of Ontario is The McMichael Collection. That was never intended to be a gallery in the sense of, "Come one, come all, we'll hang all these different kinds of new work as it comes along" and so on. It was a memorial to a particular period of Canadian art, and that's what we wanted to stress. We said this right from the first. In our 1965 agreement, we mentioned 10 artists because at that time we did not have even all the members of the Group of Seven yet. We hadn't been able to afford to buy some of the ones we wanted very badly. So the 10 were just to lead, but the advisory committee, which was specifically spelled out in the agreement, was charged with making a selection of the artists.

As I say again, repeating myself, we came up with seven other artists, all great Canadian artists, and that total did it. For as long as I was director, it stayed that way. But it was only a matter of a short time after that that unwanted pictures started to come in, simply because curators and other staff members wanted to see the numbers go up. They wanted to be heroes and have thousands of pictures in the collection, which apparently, in their opinion, made them heroes. But the vast per centage, probably 95% or 98% of the works that have been received since 1989, which was the time the Liberal government changed the mandate-I would say that's not a bad estimate. We've looked through the inventory very carefully and, on average, I would say most of these pictures are less than $1,000 in value, and most of them, to be very truthful, were actually valued by the collection upon receiving them at about $200 each.

One gift they received-and I remember so well. I sat at that meeting, even though we were outnumbered. At that point, they had changed the art committee and just eliminated Signe. Signe wasn't even allowed to be on the art committee. It was a wonder they kept me, as a matter of fact. But I remember examples of cases. One man offered to give over 700 etchings and drawings by an artist we had never heard of, a man named Mr Wood. No disrespect, I don't know the man, and he's long since gone. But these etchings and drawings had been saved. The 700 works were valued at an average of $200 each. That gives us some kind of picture. Anyone who knows anything about the value of art these days would know that a Tom Thomson sketch, and I'm speaking of a little sketch smaller than the size of that piece of paper, goes for about $200,000. It speaks for itself. It's not because of the dollars and cents or anything. The group had its period. They have maintained these prices. Their prices have gone up, while other artists before them and other artists since have continued to go down or barely hold their own in many cases.

Though I've broken entirely from the theme of my discussion-I'd like to be able to repeat this sometime so others could read it if they wish-it is our most profound goal that with the enactment of Bill 112, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection will be returned to its original focus, for the benefit of the taxpayers and the citizens of this great province.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr McMichael. I've been a little indulgent in terms of time, but I think it only fitting, in terms of who is making the presentation. Thank you very much, both for the original gift and for taking the time to come before us today.

Mr McMichael: If there are any questions, I'd be prepared to-

The Chair: Well, we'll be done in another 10 minutes, and I encourage members of the committee to approach you then, if you're still around. Technically speaking, from this point on I have to ignore the clock to be able to have the next presenter.

Mr Marchese: I'm not sure you can.

The Chair: As Chair I have that authority.

Mr Marchese: Ms Stokes, does he have the ability to do that?

The Chair: Considering that debate is still on in the House, Mr Marchese, you're out of order and being disrespectful. Please let me call the final presenter.

Mr Marchese: On a point of order: When the bell rings, do you have the authority to keep this committee going?

The Chair: Yes. The Chair, in his sole discretion, has the right to decide whether he sees the clock.

Mr Marchese: Ms Stokes, can you comment on that, please? What's your comment on that, Ms Stokes?

The Chair: If you wish to point out afterwards-if you want to interrupt a presenter, you have the right. Any committee member has that right.

Mr Marchese: Was that your comment, Ms Stokes?

VIRGINIA MACDONNELL

The Chair: Seeing that the debate is still on, we'll call forward the V. MacDonnell Gallery, if Virginia MacDonnell is here, rather than take any more time away from her presentation. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Virginia MacDonnell: Thank you. No one denies the magnitude of the gift that Robert and Signe McMichael made in giving the Canadian people the works which became the foundation of the McMichael collection of Canadian art, and for that we thank them. However, this gift has been paid for many times over, and the McMichaels have been abundantly compensated.

The McMichael collection of Canadian art has grown into a large and comprehensive collection of diverse and exceptional pieces of Canadian artwork. It represents the development of Canadian artwork within the 20th century and should be allowed to continue to grow and expand its collection into the 21st century. In doing so, the works of the Group of Seven are not being ignored or forgotten, but rather are being expanded upon. They can be seen in the full context of the development of Canadian art rather than merely appearing as a simple, isolated episode. This is something which should be encouraged and which hopefully the McMichaels should support.

Robert McMichael wrote in his autobiography that in 1968 "...we were forced to admit that although the collection and its setting were very appealing, they were not extensive or impressive enough to command the national, and possibly even international, attention that we sought." He goes on to state that with additions to the original collection and with the expansion of the collection's premises, "growth and ever-increasing public attendance went hand in hand," and it makes sense that it would.

Many public galleries and museums in Canada have fine works of art by members of the Group of Seven and their peers. It isn't necessary for people to go to the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinburg to see a Tom Thomson or an A.J. Casson. The Art Gallery of Ontario, for example, has a number of wonderful works by these artists, and one can also see works by Claes Oldenberg, Pietr Breughel and Joanne Tod. The gallery in Kleinburg must continue with the curatorial and directorial mandate to build and expand upon its collection by continuing to add work by contemporary Canadian artists. That will be its strength and what will separate it from the myriad of other public and private galleries which are out there.

1800

Mr McMichael has also likened his case for returning the McMichael collection to its original works through comparisons to the Barnes and Frick collections in the United States. These comparisons aren't really appropriate. Both the Barnes and Frick collections are private foundations and remain so. They are not public institutions. They maintain themselves through what they've been able to generate privately. They are self-sustaining.

A more accurate comparison for the McMichael gift might be the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Here, a family created the initial endowment, which has since been expanded upon and is regularly added to. The Whitney also hosts a Biennial of American Art to celebrate the achievements of contemporary American artists. It is building upon its strengths and, in doing so, expanding its audience.

The McMichael collection of Canadian art could do the same here in Canada. The lack of pride in and knowledge of our visual artists is appalling. The McMichael collection of Canadian art has the opportunity to do something brave and wonderful which would celebrate contemporary Canadian art without doing any kind of disservice to the artists from Canada's past.

In consideration of the enormous changes which have taken place since the McMichael collection of Canadian art was first formed, one suggestion might be to change the name of the gallery to the Museum of Canadian Art, and to have a special gallery set up within it called the McMichael Gallery to house the original collection, much the same as was done with the Henry Moore Gallery collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Whatever the decisions are regarding the programming and collecting mandate of the McMichael collection of Canadian art, they must be made by the professional curators, director and gallery staff and not by the Ontario government. To deaccession and sell off thousands of artworks would be catastrophic to the current Canadian art market and will create a myriad of problems regarding past and future donations of artworks to museums and galleries. Government funding for the arts is decreasing yearly, yet simultaneously initiatives which would increase private support for our public museums and galleries are being frustrated by the government as well. This dichotomy must be recognized.

Private commercial galleries will also be affected by the deaccessioning of works of art from the collection. For example, my small gallery employs two full-time staff and four part-time staff. We represent 12 artists from Ontario and Quebec, and exhibit the work of 16 others from Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Spain and England. We regularly contract work to other small businesses such as printers, designers and technicians, as well as patronize larger businesses such as Future Shop and Business Depot. We receive no government funding or grants, and we sustain ourselves through sales of contemporary art. Should there be a loss of confidence in the art market, or if the market is deluged with many contemporary works being sold at bargain basement prices, our business and the many others like it will close. The effect from this would be immediate and damaging to many.

The government should not pass Bill 112. Repeatedly in his autobiography, Robert McMichael refers to the McMichael collection as a promising youngster and of himself and Signe as proud parents. Yet every parent must step back at some point and realize that their child is an adult, capable of making his or her own decisions, and that whatever vision that parent might have had for their child's future, the destiny of that child is his or her own to make. The McMichaels and the Ontario government must realize that the McMichael collection of Canadian art is no longer a child. It has grown, developed, matured and is capable of and ready to fulfill a unique and thrilling destiny of its own.

I would like to close with the following quote: "Too often, the creative figures who timelessly reflect and shape the true character of the nation are ignored in public places." This statement was made by Paul Duval in the introduction to Robert McMichael's autobiography. I couldn't agree with it more. The McMichael collection should be one of those public places, and it must be allowed to continue to exhibit and collect work without interference or limitations of those figures who reflect the shape and character of our nation from the past, the present and in the future. Undoubtedly, those figures include Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald and Emily Carr, but they also include General Idea, Joanne Todd, Tom Dean, Carl Beam and John McEwan.

This collection of Canadian art can be a source of infinite pride and a true treasure for ourselves and for generations of Canadians to come, and the Canadian people deserve no less.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms MacDonnell. We appreciate your sticking with us to the bitter end and ending our first day of hearings here today.

Mr Marchese: For the record, and on a point of order, Mr Chair: You do not have the authority to sit beyond 6 o'clock.

The Chair: Mr Marchese, with the greatest of respect-

Mr Marchese: Out of respect, I stayed here to listen to the deputant.

The Chair: -you are wrong.

Mr Marchese: Listen to the point. You do not have the authority to do that on your own. Second, out of respect, I sat here through the presentation because I think that was the right thing to do.

The Chair: I'll let you score your points, but you're wrong.

Mr Marchese: If you want to change the rules next time, consult us; otherwise it will be difficult.

The Chair: Mr Marchese, you're treading thin ice now.

The committee stands adjourned till Wednesday at 3:30.

The committee adjourned at 1806.