FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: CCA’s Year in Review

CCA Bul­letin 17/10

 

June 25, 2010

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!