One Hundred Million Dollars for What?

LT. COL. MONTAGUE: The Honourable Brooke Claxton, Member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, holder of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, Queen's Counsel, Bachelor of Common Law, Doctor of Laws, is too well and favourably known to his fellow Canadians to require anything approaching a detailed introduction to this audience. It would perhaps meet the basic requirements of the situation to simply state how highly honoured we are by his presence here today as our guest speaker, and to add that he will address us in his capacity as the first Chairman of the Canada Council for the encouragement of the arts, humanities and social sciences.

To do so would however obscure the fact that in addition to other important offices held by him, he was President of the Canadian Club of Montreal in 1938, after previously serving for eleven years on the Executive of the Association of Canadian Clubs.

It will also fail to disclose that even after taking time out to serve as Battery Sergeant Major with the Gunners in World War I, and winning a D.C.M. for gallantry in action, he graduated from McGill, as a Bachelor of Common Law, with honours, before his 23rd birthday. Called to the Bar in the same year, 1921, he was created a K.C. in 1939.

In 1946 he received the Greek Red Cross and the Special Commemoratory Medal from France, and in 1954, the French Aeronautical Medal.

Soldier, lawyer, educationist ... he is presently a member of the Board of Governors of Carleton University ... patron of the Arts, politician ... he is perhaps best known as our first post-war Minister of National Defence from 1947 to 1954, but he had already served for the two previous years as the first Minister of National Health and Welfare.

Signer of the terms of union with Newfoundland in 1949, expert in international affairs and negotiation, he resigned from the House of Commons in 1954 and was appointed General Manager of the great Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. We can be sure he is now a top calibre life insurance executive.

One can readily understand his appointment by the Prime Minister of the day as Chairman of the Canada Council.

Mr. Brooke Claxton will now honour us by giving his own answer to his own question: "One Hundred Million Dollars for What?"

MR. CLAXTON: Your Chairman in his very generous introduction called me a lot of things. Up to three years ago I used to be called much worse than any of those.

I have been looking back at the record, and I find this is the third time I have been honoured by an invitation to address your two great organizations. The first was in 1945 and I spoke on "Social Security".

The second one was in 1951, and I spoke on "National Defence".

And today on "The Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences".

Each of these three occasions was six years apart. The subjects had one common factor: they were all very expensive.

Some people have been suggesting that when I resigned from the Government in 1954 I was showing unusual prescience about what was going to happen in the future, but I should explain the reason for this resignation.

I was on a trip of inspection out West, and going along the road from Edmonton to Vegreville on a bright spring day with General Chris Vokes in his car, with quite a cavalcade of people, we were stopped and checked up by the police for not having the right license plates.

The story that General Vokes and I spent the night in jail is a bit exaggerated, but this did produce a letter, signed "Vegrevillian" in the Edmonton Journal, which read:

"Dear Sir: It was rather amusing to hear and read the report of the stopping of the military escort to the Honourable Brooke Claxton on his way to Vegreville. We think that Mr. Claxton would accept this in good spirit, being the fine and grand old gentleman that he is."

If I was becoming known as an "old gentleman" I thought it was high time that I got another job. I thought that I was going to retire to the quiet private life of an insurance company.

For two years I refused every invitation to go on committees or take office and stuck to private business. But when Mr. St. Laurent asked me to take on the chairmanship of The Canada Council, I felt that his agreeing to my retirement put me in a position where I could not refuse. Why one takes these unremunerative and exacting and unrewarding jobs, I don't know, but there always seem to be people willing to do it.

The Canada Council Act was passed with only a small group opposing it in the House, and none in the Senate. It came into law on the 28th of March, 1957. The Council was appointed on the 15th of April and held its first organizational meeting on the 30th of April and the 1st of May.

The Council has now been in existence for some four months. During that time we have completed the work of organization and got the necessary staff established.

We have established close working relationships with the universities, the arts organizations, the social sciences and humanities, and the research councils. That preliminary work has been done.

Such little criticism of the project as I have seen seems to have been based on ascribing to the Council functions, powers and responsibilities which it hasn't got, failing to aim at some other target than the one put up by Parliament, or failing to reach a goal it has never attempted.

So I am very glad indeed to accept this opportunity to say in a few minutes what the Council is and what it hopes to do.

In the first place, a foundation of this kind, because The Canada Council is a foundation, is not a new thing, either here or in any other country. In the United States there are 7,300 foundations, of which one or two only are established by public money.

In England there is the Arts Council of Great Britain, which receives an annual grant from parliament of £900,000, two-thirds of which it spends in support of Covent Gardens Opera, and the Royal Ballet, formerly known as the Sadlers Wells Ballet.

In virtually every country outside of Canada and the United States, the Arts are substantially supported by the State. That is true, of course, of most of the countries of Europe. Among Commonwealth countries large measures of public support for the Arts are given in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Ceylon, India and Australia and, of course, in all the Iron Curtain countries. As a matter of fact, what may be called the performing arts, particularly symphonic music, opera and ballet have become so expensive that if we are going to have them at all they must receive subsidization, public or private, on a large scale.

Considerably more than half the Council's funds will be used in helping university education. In Canada we have a de-centralized system. The provinces have exclusive power over education. For one reason or other the state (federal and provincial) in Canada gives less for educational purposes than do other countries. In Britain, 73.6 cents of every dollar spent for education comes from the State. In the United States the figure is 56.6 per cent, but in Canada it is only 42 per cent.

It will be remembered that the Massey Report recommended the establishment of a Canada Council. The objectives of the Council are described in the Act passed by Parliament. They are "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts, humanities and social sciences."

Parliament, no doubt, recognized that Canada has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Our population is growing faster than that of any Western country. We have a very high standard of material civilization. We are pushing back the frontiers on every front. This material growth, it was felt, must be matched by a spiritual growth, a growth too in education, the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well.

You have all heard of the need for engineers, for skilled technicians. You have all heard that the number of undergraduates that we will have to accommodate in our universities by 1965 will double today's figure. You have all heard of the need of the universities for additional accommodation. But the greatest need of the universities is for people, trained people. Shortage of space in the universities is going to be as nothing compared to the shortage of qualified teachers, particularly in the secondary schools, and in the universities, and above everything else, teachers in the arts, humanities and social sciences because they today receive least support from business. The Canada Council was primarily set up to help meet the needs of higher education, particularly in the fields where those needs are least met today.

For these purposes a hundred million dollars were voted to the Council. Unlike most countries where assistance is voted annually, the Council was entrusted with a capital sum. This has advantages. It makes it possible to plan ahead and to carry out a planned programme. In this respect The Canada Council resembles one of the great American foundations, which have so richly nourished and strengthened the universities in the United States and Canada.

There are only seven foundations in the United States that have a fund of a hundred million dollars or more, so even measured in American terms The Canada Council is a sizeable operation. Those seven American institutions are the Ford, the largest, the Rockefeller, the Carnegie, the Kellogg, the Duke, the Pew and the Commonwealth (Harkness) ... all founded by rich men, giving a large part of their fortunes for these purposes.

Of the hundred million dollars, Parliament put fifty million in the University Capital Grants Fund. In respect of this fund the members of the Council are trustees charged with its administration in accordance with the principles set out in the Act. This fund must be invested in Canadian Government bonds or other government obligations. Capital and interest are to be spent on matching grants for additions to the universities or equivalent institutions across Canada. To qualify, the buildings must be used for purposes of "the arts, humanities and social sciences." From the debate in Parliament it appears to have been anticipated by the legislators that the capital and interest in this fund would be spent in something under ten years.

We are collecting information on the building programmes of the eighty-six institutions so far listed as eligible and when we get that information we will know better how to spread out the money and secure the best leverage in making these matching grants.

Already we have had three completed applications and at a meeting of The Canada Council held in Ottawa two weeks ago we made the first grant of $700,000 to the University of British Columbia to match the work to be done on an Arts Building there; $500,000 to Queen's for an Arts Building and residences, and $430,000 to Carleton University, with which I am associated, for library.

This money will be paid out in four instalments during the course of construction against certificates.

One of the problems we had to decide right at the start was on what basis we would allocate the money between the different universities. The statute laid down that the fund must be divided between the provinces in proportion to population. That was easy to work out on

the basis of the census of 1956. But when we come to allocating grants between the institutions in each province, the decision is entirely up to the Council. We were face to face with a difficult problem. We felt that we must have a formula that was precise, that was ascertainable and, if possible, one approved by the universities themselves.

So we met the National Council of the Universities at their annual meeting in Ottawa last June. The N.C.C.U. set up a special committee to meet us. We sat down with them the next day and worked out with them the principles on which we are making university capital grants; and it was unanimously agreed to by the representatives of the universities there and accepted by the Council at its next meeting. The guiding principle is that the money that will be available in each province in proportion to population will be earmarked for each eligible institution according to its proportion of the students working to a degree within the province. That is now in operation. That is the University Capital Grant Fund.

The other fund, also of fifty million dollars, is the Endowment Fund and The Canada Council may only spend its income. We can invest in any kind of security without restriction. To guide in this, there is a very strong investment committee, with Mr. Graham Towers as Chairman, Mr. J. G. Hungerford, president of the National Trust Company, as one member, Mr. James Muir, president of the Royal Bank as another, with Major-General George Vanier, Director of the Bank of Montreal, and myself, ex officio.

We were successful in making arrangements under which our money started to bear interest even before the Council had passed the necessary banking resolutions and bylaws. This was rather important because the interest on a hundred million dollars amounts to something over ten thousand dollars a day. So we could not let that money lie around idle.

The Council approved a policy for the allocation of investments between government, municipal or corporate bonds and common and preferred stocks. The investment program is well advanced and the rate of return is something over 5 per cent. On the Endowment Fund of $50 million we earn about $2.5 million a year. Out of that we have to meet the cost of administration. So far we have succeeded in keeping these very low indeed. The total cost of administration is something under $150,000 a year, representing about 3 per cent of the annual income of the total fund, whereas most American Foundations run from 10 to 15 per cent, and the Arts Council, 12 per cent. But the volume of work seems likely to increase and we shall have to do more work ourselves, depending less on outside assistance so expenses will increase considerably.

As authorized by the Act the government has entrusted the Council with responsibility for matters in Canada relating to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO as it is called) which will cost about $50,000 a year. This will leave the Council about $2,300,000 to spend each year on the arts, humanities and social sciences. On the humanities and social sciences there isn't too great difficulty in arriving at a programme. The Social Science Research Council has been in existence for some seventeen years and it was there ready to advise us with a programme which we could tie in to.

Similarly, the Humanities Research Council has been in existence for seven years. Similarly, it has as members, experienced people.

We made arrangements with the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Councils under which, for out-of-pocket expenses, they do a great deal of the work of examining applications for grants, processing them and advising us. The final say, of course, remains with The Canada Council.

At our meeting in Ottawa on the 19th and 20th of August we were able to arrive at a programme for ten different kinds of individual assistance, beginning with assistance for senior undergraduates, to enable them to do summer work, then graduate students leading to a master's degree, and masters leading to a doctor's degree. Provision is also made for a limited number of teachers, etc., of great distinction to have a year to do a special job. This assistance is available not only for workers in the humanities and social sciences, but also for workers in the arts.

There are special categories for people engaged in mass communications--journalism, radio, television and films. Also, for the first time, Canada is in a position to offer a number of fellowships and scholarships to students to visit Canada.

I don't know if it is appreciated, but over thirty countries today have scholarships open to Canadians and, apart from arrangements made by the Province of Quebec and some made by the Department of External Affairs using blocked funds, Canada was doing nothing in return. Although we are one of the richest countries in the world, we were the recipient of large numbers of scholarships and fellowships offered by other countries without doing anything in return. Moreover, in bringing people here we enrich our own country. Some of them will stay, some will teach, some will write while here and some, we trust, will return home as bearers of goodwill. One of the objects of The Canada Council is to project Canada abroad.

So we have these ten categories of scholarships, fellowships and awards. They have been announced and applications are being received. They will be processed by panels of experts who will make their recommendations to The Canada Council.

In the case of fellowships for non--residents, the Department of External Affairs and the other Canadian Government officials will act as our agents in collecting the papers, getting them in shape and forwarding them to us, also in seeing that effective publicity is given to the whole operation in the countries where we have accredited representatives.

We have already earmarked three of these scholarships for the new dominions--one for Ghana, one for Malaya, and one for the Dominion of the West Indies, when it comes into existence, and our hope is that this will be another bond linking the Commonwealth countries together.

In addition, in connection with work in the humanities and social sciences, we will have applications for assistance to learned institutions for assistance in publication, and that kind of thing. That isn't too difficult. We have set up the machinery to handle it. That is under way.

After four months the organization has been established, we have seen all our opposite numbers in the various organizations of the humanities, social sciences and education and we have provided a programme for disposing of the University Capital Grant and for the scholarship and fellowship programme.

Now, what is left? What is left is the arts and here we do enter a field where the going is tougher. You may be surprised to hear that none of the major foundations in the United States has had a comprehensive programme for the support of the arts. The reasons they gave me: first, they were too controversial and second, too costly.

Within the last week the Ford Foundation has announced grants of something like $760,000 a year for six different experimental projects.

By our charter we were required to step into a field which others in North America had avoided. We come up against some very difficult questions. Assuming, let us say, that we were going to spend $1,300,000 on a programme of individual assistance in the humanities and social sciences ... I don't say we are, but assuming we are ... that leaves a million dollars for the arts. Under the Act "the arts" are defined in the Bill as including "architecture, the art of the theatre, literature, music, painting, sculpture, the graphic arts and other similar creative and interpretive activities". We have no precedent to guide us and there is no experience. While there are a number of very valuable organizations, very few of them are nation-wide or even activity-wide.

We have to decide how much are we going to spend on organizations, how much on individuals. What division would we make between music, writing, painting, the theatre, opera, ballet, etc. How much on the old and accepted, how much on the new and avant-garde. How much on supporting and extending the world of the best, how much on the national scale and how much on the local. We started with assistance to the Toronto Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Ottawa Philharmonic and the Halifax Symphony orchestras. There will be others. And theatres like the Theatre du Nouveau Monde, the great French-speaking theatrical institution of Quebec. We have made a grant to enable them to make a trans-Canada tour, and to bring their plays to France and Belgium. That is one of our jobs. The National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Canadian Players and the Toronto Opera have already been authorized well-merited support; also the Canadian Arts Journal, a very fine publication of which any country can be proud, which has been self-supporting and successful with a circulation of 6,000 . . . a remarkable circulation . . . but they want some money to improve the quality, both of the text and of the reproductions. So we voted $30,000 over three years for a programme for that magazine, and $4,500 to La Vie des Arts, the corresponding French publication, and also a grant of $5,000 to the Music Journal.

As we make these awards and get in touch with the people working in all these various fields, a pattern will emerge more clearly and we will be able to see how much should be spent so as to get the best value and where it should be spent--on symphony music, choirs, the creation and recording of original Canadian compositions; in painting--perhaps in subsidizing the purchase by galleries of paintings by Canadian artists, perhaps improving the qualifications of art teachers, directors and curators of museums.

Even before the Council was set up I had spent a good deal of time in New York with the leaders in the great American institutions, particularly the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. They were most helpful and they were very enthusiastic about the institution of The Canada Council, which they felt might pave the way for a similar establishment in the United States. They gave me some warnings. They said, for example, that their experience was that if one out of three of the individuals given grants turned out to be a winner, that was batting pretty well. Their experience was that only about one application out of five received from organizations resulted--in a grant. Therefore, a considerable part of the job was to say "No" and to say it politely but firmly and without raising any question about the desirability of the work being carried on. One of the heads of a large foundation said he thought the best kind of reply turning down an application would be in a letter which concluded: "We have nothing but praise for your proposal."

Despite their long existence and wide experience we found that these institutions were still experimenting, still making studies to see what they should do. One foundation is spending $400,000 on a study to see what it should do in the field of the arts. We haven't got $400,000 for that.

In the United States they found it necessary to move around and see people. That is what we are doing. The director, Dr. Albert Trueman, the associate director, Eugene Bussiere and, as far as we can, Father Levesque, the vice-chairman, and myself are going to visit all parts of the country to talk with the people working in the fields of the social sciences, the humanities and the arts to try to get them, then and there, to sit down with us and work out proposals that will be practicable and which may bring rich dividends of increased enjoyment and satisfaction.

So far we have not had many imaginative or novel suggestions coming in. We have had all kinds of applications for local activities, like libraries, museums, choirs, c orchestras and theatres. We have not had many imaginative suggestions as to ways and means by which the ' expenditure of, say, a thousand dollars, may bring many times that worth in benefit to the Canadian people.

Interestingly enough, the Ford Foundation doesn't invite applications in the field of the arts. The Foundation goes out and picks out the things it wants to do; but it has on file unsolicited applications for grants totaling $250,000,000 indicating the size of the field.

We are finding a surprising amount of talent in Canada. We all know of the magnificent work done by the Stratford Festival. It is almost right to say there is nothing to match it in the world today.

But also individual artists ... people like Vickers and Hagen and Gould and Lois Marshall are world leaders. The boards of Broadway and the studios of Hollywood have more than a fair proportion of Canadians.

That is one of the difficulties we have to face in Canada. In this area of public performance we are always in competition with the immense resources and wealth of the United States. That is an advantage from some points of view; it gives our young people a great opportunity and we can't really complain about that any more than one would complain about an artist from Glasgow moving to London because the opportunities are greater. We have a great opportunity to encourage and help and support our young people because they have not only Canada to conquer but also the United States.

The scale of operations in the States is fantastic. I made enquiries and find that an hour long television variety programme will cost $200,000 which for talent, production, wire line charges and stations is by no means exceptional. $200,000 for an hour! The corresponding payment in Canada would probably be something of the magnitude of $30,000. A great deal of money.

We would like to send great organizations like the Toronto Symphony Orchestra across Canada. We have been in discussion with them about the possibility of the orchestra in another year having a nation-wide tour from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, but to cover the cost of that for travel and salaries without any overhead, without any of the cost of carrying on the organization throughout the year would cost $6,000 a performance. The facts that we have to cover a country larger than the United States with one-tenth the density of population, the buying public, and carry on in six time zones and two languages add to the challenge of the opportunities. The best course, it seems to us, is to assist organizations and individuals to add to what they are doing already.

That brings me to a very important point. The whole concept would be wrong if it meant that the state is taking the place of any private benefaction. What this money is intended to do is to supplement, to add, to support, to encourage what is now being done. We shall expect every organization to raise the money it has in the past and then add to it and keep on adding to it. With Council money we hope to add to this activity, to extend it to a larger audience and over a wider field, and to improve the quality of performance.

I mentioned the fact that there were 7,300 foundations in the United States. Despite that fact it is estimated that ninety-five per cent of the support of the activities carried on by the foundations comes from individuals and from corporations--only five per cent from foundations. Our hope is that we will be able to coordinate and stimulate activities, provide additional experience, but not take the place of anything.

We shall make mistakes. You can't get anywhere in any activity and certainly not in the field of the Arts without making mistakes, but it will help us to avoid them if groups of organizations, such as those represented so largely in Toronto, keep in touch with us, sit down with us and discuss their problems and try to work out with us a constructive programme.

Toward this end we are having a series of meetings of experts in the fields of writing, music, art and the theatre, over the Christmas holidays, where we will in small groups work with them to see what more can and should be done in the immediate future and what studies and surveys should be made for the future.

Now, I haven't mentioned yet the constitution of the Council. The Council consists of seventeen men and four women, coming from every province. We have had three meetings of the Council and two of the Executive Committee. They lasted two days each and, having had a good deal of experience in meetings, I would say I have never met a group of people more able or with stronger views, nor with a greater willingness to take an interest and co-operate to achieve the purposes which I am sure Parliament had in mind.

Some people seem to have been surprised that these twenty-one members of the Council were not all artists, musicians and writers. But let us give that criticism, almost the only one levelled at the Council, a second look. Experience, long experience, in the United States has shown that the trustees of their foundations should not, generally speaking, be specialists. They should be representative citizens having a wide experience in public and private affairs, who because of that experience are able to make an appreciation of a proposal and, having regard to the necessity of balancing resources, are able to exercise good judgment. In arriving at decisions the Council will, whenever possible, look to experts for advice.

There is one obvious reason for taking that course. The field is so large--consider the arts, humanities and social sciences--that no council would be large enough to represent the major headings of the objectives set for us by Parliament, still less the various schools of music, painting or the theatre. If there was such a parliament of the arts, humanities and social sciences, how could they possibly agree to a method of dividing up the money in the way best desired to suit the over-all purpose? Someone else would probably have to do that; someone rather like The Canada Council.

And further, our Council is in the position of trustee. After all, a hundred million dollars to look after for the Canadian people is a large undertaking. But while the members of the Council have had positions of responsibility in public or private life, they have had a remarkable total of experience with the administration of universities, art galleries, orchestras and pretty well everything else coming into our sphere. I don't think there is a single member of the Council without a great deal of experience in one or other and usually several of these fields, so in that way we may have the advantage of an unspecialized knowledge of affairs, combined with interest long demonstrated in active work in one or other of them.

I have mentioned organization. The Queen herself, in that wonderful visit she made to Ottawa, completed this work of organization in giving her approval while there to the use of the Royal Crown in the seal of The Canada Council. We thought this was a very great honour indeed. I don't think she signed many things in Ottawa. We will have in The Canada Council room this lasting souvenir of our Sovereign's visit and of her interest in this field. Her participation was needed because to mark that the origin of the Council was in the Royal Commission set up under the Chairmanship of His Excellency, the Right Honourable Vincent Massey, Commander Alan Beddoe, responsible for the Books of Remembrance of the Great War 1914-18 and of the Second War, had put in the Royal Crown.

It may be remembered that the Royal Commission also recommended that the proposed Canada Council should be concerned with the affairs of UNESCO ... UNESCO standing for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations.

Do you know why I boggled over that? The use of the world "cultural" . . . you may have observed I have come to the end of my speech and I haven't used the word yet except in connection with UNESCO. The Canada Council is not a culture factory. This organization is designed to supplement and add to what is now being done, to fill gaps, not to replace anything, not to direct anything, but to be an additional servant of the Canadian people, along lines perhaps somewhat similar to the National Research Council or the Defence Research Council with which I had to do in the field of science ... serving the needs of the people of all of Canada in this important field of the arts, humanities and social sciences. As we see our country grow, with a population estimated for 1980 of twenty-eight million people, and a gross national production that year of $74 billion, we are going to have far more leisure, far more leisure than today. One of the things we are going to have to do is learn how to use that leisure. More important, we are going to need far better educated people because life is going to become much more complex. Business is becoming more complex. Education will have to be broad and general because business today is looking for "generalists" as well as technicians and specialists, and our engineers and scientists are going to need a more general foundation in language and other subjects with which the Council is concerned.

So, to meet the challenging needs and the opportunities of the country as we see them ahead, the Canada Council is there. It will be best judged by what it accomplishes. I believe that the best things it will do will be to assist people, individuals, to make a better use of their own capacities by taking them abroad or to another teaching institution in Canada, by giving them a year within which to learn how to work, how to teach, how to study, how to paint better than they would otherwise do, because the future of our country in every field, but particularly in this, depends on people.

The Canada Council, we hope, will be regarded as a people's organization, to serve people and to enrich our national life.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. Henry E. Langford, President of the Canadian Club of Toronto.