CCA Bulletin 14/06

FROM THE DESK OF ALAIN PINEAU
National Director
Canadian Conference of the Arts

March 10, 2006

The Canadian Conference of the Arts has concluded an intensive five days of consultation and deliberation designed to help formulate the CCA’s agenda for presentation to the new government. The Chalmers Conference, the National Policy Conference and a two-day meeting of the Board of Governors which followed immediately after yielded a rich harvest of ideas and strategies, from our keynote speakers, conference delegates and the Board and Secretariat of the CCA.

The experience was an affirmation of the important role that the cultural sector attributes to the CCA in the wide range of cultural policy issues before us. It was also an occasion for all of us to start working on a new way of delivering our message to Parliamentarians about the place that artists and cultural institutions and industries occupy in the fabric of Canadian society. There are many things to say about the event, and I will get back to them in another bulletin soon.

For now, I would first like to thank the delegates, our young conference bloggers, our keynote speakers and our sponsors for making this extraordinary event possible and enriching. I will also invite you all to go the website and check the material coming out of the conferences (www.ccarts.ca).

The real challenge begins right now, as the Secretariat articulates and implements an action plan based on what we drew from the five days of deliberation.

One of the first things that we all seem to agree upon is the inevitability of another federal election within the next 18-24 months. Accordingly, the Board of Governors of the CCA has directed the Secretariat to begin planning for this eventuality immediately. Our election readiness campaign will begin in the coming weeks, both with the publication of our advocacy agenda and with an appeal for a special levy from our members and supporters to finance the preparation of a broad-based election strategy. You will be hearing more about this soon.

For the immediate future , the Board of the CCA has identified the forthcoming federal budget as our first and most important target. The CCA will be seeking meetings with the Minister of Finance, Minister of National Revenue, the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the official opposition critics for each of these portfolios. Our agenda for these meetings is clear:

• ask the government to honour the commitments outlined in the November 23, 2005 announcement; this includes the progressive increase to the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts by $150 million over the next three fiscal years, as well as increases to the cultural funding programs in Foreign Affairs, the National Art Centre and national training institutions;
• we will also seek some movement on tax policy issues, including expanding the proposed tax credit for extracurricular physical activities to include arts activities, and a more equitable treatment of self-employed artists and arts professionals;
• we will encourage the new government to proceed immediately with a new federal museums policy, which must provide a minimum of $75 million a year in new funds over three years to make it an effective tool.

The letters to these officials will be posted on our website with replies that the CCA receives, as they come in.

The next five weeks are critical for having any influence over the federal budgetary process, as the Speech from the Throne will be read on 4 April with rumours of a federal budget to coming the following Monday or Tuesday, just prior to the House’s Easter break recess. As our keynote speaker, former Deputy Minister Alain Gourd, noted at the Saturday session of the national policy conference, the cultural sector has no time to waste and we must ensure our message has resonance with the new government’s expressed priorities and their touchstones of accountability and efficiency (to see Alain Gourd’s presentation, please refer to our Website. Alain made a very strong impression on delegates and his advice is most timely as we launch our advocacy efforts with this new government).

I undertake to keep you posted about any progress or challenges we encounter along the way. We are in the process of crafting a longer term action plan that will include many of the ideas and priorities we heard at both the Chalmers and National Policy conferences. This will be included in the first issue of our new electronic magazine @gora, dedicated to the March conferences and their outcomes.

If you have any thoughts that you want to share regarding the conferences or priorities that the CCA should pursue, please do not hesitate to share them with us by email, telephone or letter. We will be grateful to receive them.