The Decibel - The battle over the future of the Banff arts centre

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

There has been turmoil at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and it recently came to the public’s attention when the Alberta government dismissed the entire board in late October. The whirlwind drama started with the search for a new CEO, which led to arguments of conflict of interest and allegations of bullying and harassment.Today, The Globe’s Alanna Smith and Josh O’Kane, who have been covering this story, explain what led to this moment, and tell us about the battle for the future of the Banff Centre.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

One of Canada's most respected arts organizations is in turmoil. And now we know why. It started when the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity began looking for a new CEO. That led to arguments about conflict of interest, allegations of bullying and harassment. And then, late last month, the Alberta government dismissed the entire board. At the core of all this, people are concerned that the Banff Centre is losing its way. Today, I'm joined by Alanna Smith, the Globe's reporter in Calgary, and Josh O'Kane, the Globe's arts and business reporter. They'll explain the whirlwind drama that led to this moment and the battle over the future of the Banff Arts Centre.

I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Alana, Josh, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having us. It's good to be back. All right. I think we should just start by talking about the center itself here. So tell me about the Banff Center. Alana, I'll start with you since you're there in Alberta.

Sure. So the Banff Center has been training artists since 1933. So that's 90 years now. And what started as a single drama course has since become this globally recognized arts training institution that's helped strengthen talent in more than 100,000 artists, musicians, authors. And here we're talking big names like Sarah McLachlan and Salman Rushdie. And the institution is not only revered internationally, but especially here in Canada. And that's for its training programs and residencies that are, of course, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies.

I mean, you know, for decades, this has been a home for Canadians and people around the world to hone their crafts, no matter what kind of art they're doing. Writers, musicians, theatrical performers, playwrights, dancers, visual artists. I mean, two of my favorite books of the last couple of years both make reference to time spent at the Banff Center. And if you were to grab a stack of 10 acclaimed books from Canadian authors, you'd be guaranteed to find one or two that thank the Banff Center and their acknowledgments. Yeah. Alana, maybe just at a really high level, can you just give us a sense of what is the controversy here really about? What is at the root of it? So I think the heart of this controversy is really the future of BAMF Center and which direction it's going to take. Is it going to continue to be driven by the arts, which it has been for, you know, nine decades, or is it going to go more towards tourism and

its path forward? And this isn't a new concern. We've heard this concern for quite a few years now. In fact, during the height of the pandemic in early 2021, there were quite a number of former employees and artists that told the globe that the organization was straying from its original mandate. You know, it was no longer really an arts incubator. And instead, it was favoriting these lucrative business conferences and these business leadership programs that make a lot of money for the organization. And there was actually a board member who was dismissed in 2021. She's a former MLA, Donna Kennedy Glanz. She said that the reason that she was, you know, axed from the board was actually part of a much larger issue. And that issue stemmed from problems with workplace culture and that she had been questioning certain members and, you know,

their vision for the BAMF Center and its path forward. She also talked to us on the phone last week and she said, you know, the board wasn't prioritizing the perspectives of artists. So it's a continuing concern that's come up for quite a number of years now. And the BAMF Center website itself, you know, it champions being a festival and conference facility. You open up the website, there's a quote right there that says, BAMF Center is where meetings take center stage, unquote. Okay. And Josh, is that something you're hearing too? Like you're our arts reporter, is this something that I guess is a concern for people in the arts community? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some artists have actually been concerned about the spirit of the BAMF Center for decades, arguing that the focus on corporate meetings can take away from

the experience of artists who are there trying to refine their work. I was texting with the playwright Michael Healy earlier, and I know him well. And he responded to my first tweet about the story. He was there in the late 90s when they had just begun doing corporate retreats. And I'm going to quote from him here, eating from the humble buffet in the dining hall and the view through the vast windows was obscured by folks with lanyards enjoying a lavish barbecue, thick steaks and cocktails. It was over for artists. So let's actually get into this story here then. Josh, there's a lot going on here that led to the board being dismissed late last month. But take us back a little bit. Where does this story really start? Sure. So for about eight years,

the Banff Center was run by the CEO named Janice Price. She's a career arts administrator. She was the founding CEO of the Luminato Festival for Arts in Toronto, brought a very big resume to the Banff Center. But her final contract extension was supposed to go through to March of 2023. And so in late 2021, early 2022, very naturally, the board of directors began to establish a search committee for the new CEO, who would be the successor to Ms. Price. So they began their search process. And then in July of 2022, according to the timeline we've established based on a document that we've obtained, the search committee began to widen the scope of the search for the new CEO. And this scope was widened to include people with experience in tourism and hospitality. Is that a big deal for them to look kind of elsewhere and outside of the arts for someone like this?

So according to this document that we've received, it was internally quite a big deal to several unnamed members of the board. And what happened was these members approached the CEO at the time, Janice Price, and said that they had concerns. And the word was urged her to speak to the chair of the organization, the chair of the Banff Center's board named Adam Watrous. And when Ms. Price approached Mr. Watrous to discuss this matter, he, according to this document we've received, raised concerns that she was in a conflict of interest. So there's a few things going on here. So the board had concerns. They asked the current CEO, now former CEO, Price, to take them to Watrous, the chair of

the board. And so it sounds like he was making accusations that she was somehow getting involved where she shouldn't be. Correct. Now, why would that be the case? I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with how boards work, but a CEO generally is allowed to nurture a candidate but cannot take part in the search for their successor. That is one of the most important jobs that a board can do. And so it is considered often a conflict for a CEO to be sort of involved in that process. And he raised this concern with her in July 2022. Then in October of 2022, there was supposed to be a vote going forward, picking the new CEO. And initially, the search committee, according to the document we've seen, picked this gentleman named Chris Lorway, who had worked with Ms. Price before

and had most recently been the head of Stanford Live, which is a live organization for live events at Stanford University. But he's Canadian. He's from Cape Breton. So he sounds like he's got a background in the arts then. He does. And this is the candidate that the search committee puts forward. But also in October 2022, when the chair, Mr. Watrous, gets basically the agenda from the search committee to have the whole board vote on whether to proceed

with this candidate, the document we found shows that he modified the agenda and put forward some details to consider for another candidate, which at this point raised the concern of the general counsel of the Banff Center, again, according to the document, and who then texted a vice president, and I quote, the board may implode. There were concerns on both sides of whether or not they were following the right processes to pick this new CEO. Okay, so it sounds like there's a conflict here. So Josh, what happens then between the CEO, Janice Price, and the chair of the board, called, and I quote, aggressive and intimidating, according to this document that we've received. She then files a formal harassment complaint, and that instigates an investigation into the

exchange between them that also has an extremely long history of what happened. The copy of which we obtained, which allowed us to be able to paint this full picture of what actually was happening inside the Banff Center that led to all of this discord. Okay, so I just want to make sure I understand here. So this dispute is around hiring a new CEO for the Banff Center. And the hiring committee did put forward a candidate who was a longtime arts administrator. And then Watrous, who was head of the board at the time, was concerned that this was a conflict of interest, especially because Price had been talking with people from the hiring committee. And then Watrous suggested kind of late in the game that they should actually consider another candidate.

And that increased the conflict between Price and Watrous. And that then eventually led to Price's allegations there of bullying and harassment. Correct. Okay, so what ended up happening here, Josh? I guess, how did the board vote in this way? So the board voted to hire Chris Lorway, the experienced arts administrator, to become the next CEO of the Banff Center, and he was announced in January. The board then receives the investigative report from the independent investigator Jay Spark, and Ms. Price retires. And then we've received correspondence that shows that there was in fact a counter complaint filed by Mr. Watrous against Ms. Price. We'll be right back. Okay, so the new CEO is in place, but this drama is nowhere near from being over here. So, Alana, what happens next?

I mean, this drama has been going on for a while. So we didn't know any of this until we started investigating in late October, and that was after the Alberta government put out a statement. It was really late at night, and they said that Paul Bay, who's the founder of Touchstone Exploration, Inc., was replacing the BAMF Center board as its temporary administrator. And in his press release, they said that his task is to, quote, review internal processes and policies at Banff Center for a term of about six months, but it could go longer.

OK, can we back up here? So this one person is replacing the entire board. So this is this is what happened in late October. The Alberta government dismissed the entire board and brought in a single administrator. So, Elena, I guess why is the Alberta government doing this? Why are they involved? Well, board appointments at the Banff Center are overseen by Alberta's Ministry of Advanced Education. So there are some board members who are provincially appointed, and then there are others who are non-provincially appointed. Okay. So where does the Banff Center actually get its funding from? So the Banff Center is funded both with provincial dollars, federal dollars, and then it also does fundraising of its own.

And we understand that the Alberta government actually received a copy of this report in March. We've asked them, why did it take so long for you to act on this report? We didn't get a response back. So I wouldn't be able to tell you what that reasoning is. OK. All right. So it sounds like there was there was stuff happening earlier this year in March, but nothing actually happened. The Alberta government didn't dissolve the board until late October. So what happened? What happened in late October to make them do that? So we've seen two letters. One of them was to the advanced education minister, Demetrius

Nicolaitis in late April. And that was a letter that he sent to Mr. Watrous, the board chair, where he said that Mr. Watrous had retained the government's full support in his role as chair. Flash forward to October 22nd, that's where we received the second correspondence. And this is emails between Rajan Sani, which is the current advanced education minister in Alberta, and then Mr. Watrous, who's of course the board chair. In this email exchange, he puts forward kind of two options for the province to move forward, you know, regarding everything that's happened at the BAMF Center and their path forward. So the first option is to strengthen corporate governance with a senior legal advisor and a new separate investigation. And then the

second option that he puts forward is to replace the entire board. And so now we know that's exactly what happened. The entire board was replaced by a single administrator. Is it normal for the Alberta government to take the suggestion of like a few board members like that? If you're familiar with Alberta politics, this isn't the first time they've done something like this. It was only last November, so about a year ago now, that they actually replaced the entire 12-person Alberta Health Services Board, which is our health authority, with a single administrator. And so their reasoning was that if they have a single administrator, their sole focus could be on the health care system and making improvements. It's a bit of a different situation, though, in the sense that Premier Smith, you know, at the time had just won her leadership election to become the leader of the United Conservative Party. And she was really open and honest about it.

She had talked about replacing the AHS board, you know, during her leadership campaign. So, you know, there was no writing on the wall. I mean, it was clear we knew it was coming. This isn't the same sort of situation. You know, we hadn't heard about replacing the board from the province, at least publicly, until it happened in late October. Okay, so now there's this new administrator that the Alberta government has brought in. Josh, what do we know about who this is? So the new administrator, Paul Bay, he's basically sort of worked for the last quarter

century doing oil and gas exploration and production. He's currently the CEO of Touchstone Exploration. But he also has some like pretty extensive experience working in this sort of the arts governance world. So he is currently the chair of the board of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. And he's also been on the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Canada. So he does bring extensive administrative as well as governance experience to the role. And one of the things we have learned from the government and from the Banff Center is that they want to do a governance review to try to make sure that whatever the board

does in the future, that they kind of, there's a little bit more, I guess, organization to it, presumably to avoid the kind of discord that we've been reporting on for the last week or so. And actually something to think about is that single administrator that was appointed to Alberta Health Services, Dr. John Cowell, he was only supposed to be there for a short amount of time, but now he's been there for a year. And there's no signal that he's going to be leaving anytime soon. Paul Bay has also been, you know, they've tapped him on the shoulder and they said, you know, you're going to be here for six months. But, you know, if history repeats itself, he could actually be there a lot longer. And it could be a lot longer before we see another board at the Banff Center.

So I guess where does this go from here? Elena, maybe I'll ask you this. Do we have a sense of what the future might be for the Banff Center? I mean, I think your guess is as good as mine. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I really think we need time to understand how these really significant changes at Banff Center will unfold and how they'll take the direction of the BAMF Center, especially in the sense of whether it's going to gear more towards the arch or more towards tourism. But maybe if I could, I'll read you a quote from Kennedy Glantz, and that's that former board member that we talked about earlier. She kind of, when we talked to her about the dismissal of the board, she considers

it a bit of a course correct. And so the quote that she sold us was, I think the board had altered the mandate of the BAMF Center in a, I think the board had altered the mandate of the BAMF Center in a way that didn't align with what the expectations of most Albertans were, or very importantly, the expectation of many of the artists, the cultural community that is supposed to be the very heart of the BAMF Center. So I think it's a way to course correct. Artists were not at the BAMF Center to be part of a tourist attraction. And so we just have to kind of wait and see where it goes. And just lastly, Josh, I mean, ultimately, the impacts of this are probably going to be felt by people in the arts world, right? So what have you heard about how artists are feeling about all of

this? I mean, it's exceptionally difficult to make a living as an artist these days, money is spread so thin, real estate costs are so high, you can barely find a place to live. And so institutions that support the arts are crucial to helping people establish their careers and, you know, make ideally a living off of what they do so they can keep creating and contributing to Canadian culture. The Banff Centre is one of the most important places in Canada for this kind of, you know, education and training. I know artists are telling me if we lose this, we're going to lose a lot about the soul of this country. Alana, Josh, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through this today.

Thanks. Thanks, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wells. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.