CCA Bulletin 17/10

June 25, 2010

CCA’s Year in Review

The House has adjourned, the weather is warm and muggy and the earth has shaken in Ottawa. It’s now late June and after our wrap-up of the parliamentary session, it is time to review what the CCA has accomplished over the past year. The CCA’s accomplishments were discussed last week in Ottawa during its annual general meeting and during a board meeting.  While the board meeting was occupied in good part by discussions on important policy issues like copyright reform, foreign ownership of cultural industries and pre-budget submissions, the AGM was an opportunity to reflect on the CCA’s standing after four years of repositioning and reconstruction.

In her second report to our members, CCA President Kathleen Sharpe said that the organization has been able to consolidate its status as a key, authoritative observer and analyst of the issues and events at the federal level that affect our vast sector in one way or another. She noted that the CCA’s unique perspective on issues has received increased recognition from Parliamentarians and regulators, the result of several well thought-out public interventions over the past four years. This point is illustrated by the fact that the CCA was the first group invited by the newly formed all-party Arts Caucus to give an overview of the cultural sector and the main issues that it faces. The CCA was also invited to make presentations to the caucuses of the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois on current policy issues.

The CCA has been very active on the policy front, having appeared as a witness in front of several parliamentary committees and the CRTC on various issues such as the federal budget, the digital economy, the private copying levy, the importance of investing in artistic experimentation and the controversy surrounding the “value–for-signal” matter, which for months has pitted cable and satellite companies against traditional broadcasters.

During the year, the CCA also met with groups in various parts of the country. We participated in panels in Saskatchewan, Ontario, Québec and Newfoundland. Thanks in part to the support of the Trillium Foundation, the CCA was able to present its Cultural Policy 101 Workshop in several communities in Ontario. All in all, we participated in no less than 23 public events.

Throughout the year, the CCA pursued work on long-term issues of importance for the vitality of arts and culture in our society such as cultural statistics, trade negotiations with the European Union and arts and learning. It is well known that important issues are rarely urgent. Given their limited resources and the immediate challenges they face on an on-going basis, arts service organizations and their members rarely have the time or energy to engage in long-term and fundamental issues, often only tangential to their immediate preoccupations. Because of the breadth of its membership and the perspectives it takes on issues, the CCA believes that part of its unique mandate is to deal with such long-term policy issues.

Building on the relationship we have established with the University of Ottawa, the CCA developed an exciting new project titled Thinking Culture. In partnership with the Centre for Continuing Education, the Centre for Governance and the School of Political Studies at the university, the CCA will offer an annual series of forums dedicated to cultural policy issues. This series will launch in September and will offer at least five forums in the first year, all of which will be made available throughout the country through webcasts. This new initiative will further establish the CCA as a leading forum for thoughtful debate and analysis of arts and cultural policy issues.

With the support of a distinguished national steering committee chaired by Garry Neil,  we have been working hard on the planning of our next National Policy Conference, Artists: Powering the Creative Economy? The conference will take place on November 2 and 3 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and will be preceded on the evening of November 1 by a gala evening celebrating the CCA’s 65th anniversary, during which we will present the CCA Awards.

All of this work has been done in what I can only describe as a challenging year for the CCA. The CCA started the year with a $46,000 deficit incurred the previous year. This was not the result of bad management, but the consequence of having taken on a number of initiatives in keeping with our strategic plan for which, against reasonable expectations, supporting revenue did not materialize.

Thanks to the considerable efforts of the staff, we are happy to report that we have erased this deficit almost completely and have therefore started the current fiscal year from a much better position. We are proud of this achievement in what remains a difficult time for membership retention and recruitment. However, our financial success has come with a price. Given less money and the additional workload on everyone in the secretariat, some activities have suffered, including our communications with stakeholders and our research projects.

Supporting the work of the strategic coordination committee after the March 2009 Chalmers Conference in Ottawa required a lot of time and energy between April and October. Then the committee lost momentum, due in part to the loss of urgency of an impending federal election. But this initiative has not been abandoned. It will be part of some major developments in the coming months, including the way in which the CCA involves its membership in the running of its activities.

I must open a parenthesis here to acknowledge that much remains to be done in communicating what added value the CCA brings to a sector where, at all levels of government, arts service organizations have multiplied, each addressing the specific needs and interests of the various disciplines, cultural institutions and industries. The CCA knows what its unique mandate is. It has a clear vision of where it wants to go and an increasingly focused idea of how to get there. However, a pre-condition of the CCA realizing its overarching goals means securing the full involvement and backing of its membership. This reality will be at the core of the revision of our strategic plan and of some substantial initiatives which will be announced in the coming months.

During the past four years, the CCA has managed to not only survive several challenges and two near-death experiences, but also improve its ability to move forward in its repositioning. It has largely rebuilt its credibility with its main funders, political personnel and the press, and to a large extent, with its membership, a vital element to its very existence.

The CCA secretariat will be busy all summer responding to various consultations currently underway and planning for what promises to be a busy schedule in the fall, especially given the possibility of another federal election within the next several months! Stay tuned!