FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: A Summer Roundup

CCA Bul­letin 24/10

Sep­tem­ber 7, 2010

 

Labour Day week­end has come and gone, and one can only hope that the sum­mer weather will last a lit­tle longer. In just two weeks, the House of Com­mons will resume its work after the tra­di­tional sum­mer BBQ cir­cuits most MPs have been trekking on come to an end. Spec­u­la­tion is rife as to whether or not we will have a fall elec­tion, and the first few days of sit­ting may shed some light on the like­li­hood of such an event.

How­ever, the sum­mer was not recess time for every­one. While the House was away, the CCA was hard at work sub­mit­ting briefs and join­ing in on national debates! We had a busy sum­mer voic­ing the con­cerns and needs of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor to fed­eral deci­sion mak­ers, in addi­tion to some provin­cial ones. As the sum­mer comes to a close, and in case you missed some of the action, here are the high­lights of what the CCA did for you dur­ing those hot months!

Sum­mer consultations

Over the past few years, the gov­ern­ment has used the sum­mer period to run a series of con­sul­ta­tions on a vari­ety of top­ics of great impor­tance. Beware if stake­hold­ers were intent on hav­ing a bit of a vaca­tion: as we indi­cated in our June ses­sion wrap-up, dead­lines fol­lowed each other fairly closely in July and August.

As is the case every sum­mer, the CCA sub­mit­ted its

pre-budget sub­mis­sion

for 2011 to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance. In it, the CCA frames the man­ner in which the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should invest in arts and cul­ture, and empha­sizes the need for the gov­ern­ment to con­tinue its com­mit­ment of sta­ble fund­ing for arts and cul­ture as we come to the end of Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan. The CCA states that while it under­stands the neces­sity to start elim­i­nat­ing the annual fed­eral bud­get deficit, it would be very short-sighted to slash invest­ments in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, par­tic­u­larly given the fact that it has yet to expe­ri­ence the main impacts of the recent eco­nomic crisis.

The CCA out­lines pri­or­i­ties to sta­bi­lize and enrich the eco­nomic capac­ity of the cre­ative sec­tor. The com­plete sub­mis­sion defines six rec­om­men­da­tions for invest­ment: audi­ence and mar­ket devel­op­ment at home and abroad; increas­ing the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts; invest­ing in train­ing, intern­ship and men­tor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties; imple­ment­ing a long-overdue National Museum Pol­icy; ensur­ing that the sec­tor gets the cul­tural sta­tis­tics it needs; and increas­ing incen­tives for Cana­di­ans to donate to arts and her­itage organizations.

Ear­lier in the sum­mer, the CCA sub­mit­ted a brief in which it urged the gov­ern­ment to make con­tent cre­ation a cen­tre­piece of the

national strat­egy for the dig­i­tal economy

. The CCA’s fun­da­men­tal approach to a national strat­egy is based on the belief that infra­struc­ture, wires, cables and cor­po­ra­tions will not be enough to sus­tain a robust dig­i­tal econ­omy, let alone a vibrant dig­i­tal soci­ety, if con­tent cre­ators are not included in this strat­egy. Canada’s dig­i­tal econ­omy relies on the exper­tise of its cre­ative work­ers. Their con­tent cre­ation must be encour­aged by a national strat­egy, pro­tected by reg­u­la­tions, sup­ported by appro­pri­ate train­ing and dis­trib­uted on as many dig­i­tal plat­forms as pos­si­ble. In its brief, the CCA main­tains that reg­u­la­tion con­cern­ing own­er­ship of our cul­tural indus­tries, intel­lec­tual prop­erty, pro­vid­ing tools to Cana­dian com­mu­ni­ties and train­ing for cre­ators must be amongst the key pil­lars on which to build a suc­cess­ful approach for the new dig­i­tal economy.

On the topic of

for­eign ownership

the CCA sub­mit­ted a brief to the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Indus­try on the sub­ject of open­ing up telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions for for­eign invest­ment. Over the pre­ced­ing months, the CCA had already pre­sented its posi­tion to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tees on Indus­try and on Heritage and to the CRTC. The CCA repeats that the long-standing oper­at­ing prin­ci­ple in Cana­dian cul­tural pol­icy is that Cana­dian own­er­ship and effec­tive con­trol of our cul­tural indus­tries will ensure that more Cana­dian con­tent is made avail­able to Cana­di­ans. This is the case because it is eas­ier to reg­u­late Cana­dian owned com­pa­nies than for­eign owned ones and because Cana­di­ans are more likely than non-Canadians to tell our own sto­ries and to present our own view of the world based on our own val­ues and perspectives.

Over the past two decades, Canada has allowed a grow­ing con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship in our cul­tural indus­tries in the name of mak­ing them stronger and bet­ter equipped to com­pete in a global envi­ron­ment. We now have huge Cana­dian con­glom­er­ates with inter­ests in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, broad­cast­ing, spe­cialty ser­vices, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, pub­lish­ing, music and book dis­tri­b­u­tion. Given this con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and the con­ver­gence of tech­nolo­gies, open­ing up for­eign own­er­ship and con­trol of our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions can only lead to tremen­dous pres­sures to enable a sim­i­lar model in cable and broad­cast­ing. Cou­pled with the poten­tial impact of trade nego­ti­a­tions, this could result in severe con­se­quences for Cana­dian cul­tural sovereignty.

Advo­cacy activities

In July, the CCA joined an increas­ing num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions in all walks of life to protest the government’s deci­sion to abol­ish the manda­tory

long-form cen­sus

and replace it with a faulty, and more expen­sive vol­un­tary house­hold sur­vey. The CCA shares the con­cerns of other groups regard­ing the seri­ous con­se­quences of this deci­sion, and notes that the main loss is the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a num­ber of Cana­di­ans, includ­ing First Nations, the poor­est and rich­est of Cana­di­ans and the self employed, who cover a very large num­ber of artists and creators.

As a result, we will lose impor­tant data on the cul­tural work­force. Another con­se­quence to the cul­tural sec­tor is the very seri­ous impact this new approach will have in the design of sur­veys them­selves. A cen­sus, or some other instru­ment that lists all indi­vid­u­als in a pop­u­la­tion, is required for the proper design of vol­un­tary sam­ple sur­veys. Try­ing to use a sam­ple house­hold sur­vey, in place of a cen­sus, to design social or house­hold sur­veys will effec­tively under­mine the entire sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem as it relates to non-business data.

In August, the CCA took the unusual ini­tia­tive of writ­ing an

open let­ter to British Colum­bia Pre­mier Gor­don Campbell

, protest­ing the very seri­ous cuts imposed to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. Signed by CCA Pres­i­dent Kath­leen Sharpe, the let­ter states that from the eco­nomic view­point, it is a seri­ous strate­gic error to cut invest­ments to artists and cre­ators who are an impor­tant com­po­nent of the cre­ative econ­omy. In the wake of the res­ig­na­tion of the BC Arts Coun­cil Chair, the let­ter also empha­sized the impor­tance of estab­lish­ing arts fund­ing agen­cies at arm’s length from gov­ern­ments and politi­cians. The state­ments in the let­ter have been echoed through­out BC and may have con­tributed to the recently announced deci­sion by the gov­ern­ment to some­what rein­state fund­ing to the Arts Council.

Finally, the CCA has added its voice to that of over 60 orga­ni­za­tions across the coun­try to oppose pri­vate Bill C-470

,

whose pur­pose is to arbi­trar­ily limit the remu­ner­a­tion of char­i­ta­ble exec­u­tives and force the pub­li­ca­tion of employ­ees’ salaries irre­spec­tive of the size of those organizations.

Prepar­ing for the fall

The CCA has kept a watch­ing brief on two major files in prepa­ra­tion for the fall, the first being copy­right. We hosted a meet­ing between the Cre­ators’ Copy­right Coali­tion and its Que­bec coun­ter­part, the DAMIC, dur­ing which both orga­ni­za­tions exchanged infor­ma­tion regard­ing their respec­tive posi­tions, and started work­ing of joint strate­gies con­cern­ing the upcom­ing par­lia­men­tary hear­ings on

Bill C-32

and copy­right reform.

The sec­ond issue is the cur­rent

nego­ti­a­tions between Canada and the Euro­pean Union

con­cern­ing the con­clu­sion of the Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nomic and Trade Agree­ment (CETA). At the begin­ning of July, the CCA shared an analy­sis by legal expert Peter Grant with a num­ber of its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions, look­ing at the leaked early draft agree­ment from the arts and cul­ture per­spec­tive. Then, we met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Euro­pean Union to explore their posi­tions con­cern­ing a vari­ety of issues, includ­ing intel­lec­tual prop­erty leg­is­la­tion, the cul­tural exemp­tion and for­eign own­er­ship of cul­tural indus­tries. These meet­ings led to another one last week with Canada’s chief trade nego­tia­tor and two other gov­ern­ment offi­cials from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage and the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade. Dur­ing this meet­ing, thir­teen mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions had the oppor­tu­nity to ask ques­tions and express opin­ions on a num­ber of cul­tural issues related to the CETA nego­ti­a­tion. The CCA will soon pub­lish more detailed bul­letins on both of these impor­tant issues.

Finally, we have been very busy putting the final touches on two great ini­tia­tives:

Think­ing Culture

, a new cul­tural forum series pre­sented in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa, which starts on Sep­tem­ber 23, and our 2010 National Pol­icy Con­fer­ence,

Artists: Pow­er­ing the Cre­ative Economy?

, which will take place from Novem­ber 1 to 3 at  the National Arts Cen­tre in Ottawa.

So, as you can see, this has been a busy sum­mer in prepa­ra­tion for an even busier fall sea­son! Hop­ing to see you all at the Novem­ber CCA National Pol­icy Conference.