FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: Cold grey weather welcomes Parliamentarians to Ottawa

CCA Bul­letin 20/11

June 2, 2011

Sum­mer was with us at the begin­ning of the week, but it’s cold grey weather that marks the return of our Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to Ottawa, to the start of Canada’s 41st Par­lia­ment. Today, our mem­bers of Par­lia­ment will vote by secret bal­lot to elect a new Speaker of the House of Com­mons. This may take quite a few rounds of vot­ing… or not! Tomor­row after­noon, the Gov­er­nor Gen­eral will go to Par­lia­ment to deliver his first Speech from the Throne, in which we will find out what the gov­ern­ment wants to achieve before sum­mer recess.

The CCA expects that this early sum­mer ses­sion will be brief, cen­tered on the tabling of the 2011 fed­eral bud­get on Mon­day, June 6. It is widely assumed that this fed­eral bud­get will be almost iden­ti­cal to the bud­get tabled in March 2011, with the excep­tion of the intro­duc­tion of two elec­toral promises, namely a pro­vi­sion that will phase out the per-vote sub­sidy for fed­eral polit­i­cal par­ties over three years and the trans­fer of some $2 bil­lion to Que­bec, rel­a­tive to the har­mo­nized sales tax. We expect nei­ther good nor bad sur­prises for the cul­tural sec­tor in this doc­u­ment. On the other hand, it is not expected that we will see a new bill to mod­ify the Copy­right Act before the fall.

Over the past week, I have sent out let­ters con­grat­u­lat­ing min­is­ters and oppo­si­tion crit­ics who will work on port­fo­lios that impact  arts, cul­ture and her­itage. I hope to meet with as many of them as pos­si­ble in the next few weeks in order to intro­duce the CCA and explore how the CCA can help them with their work in the com­ing year.

Look­ing towards the sum­mer, the CCA will be focused on prepar­ing for what promises to be a busy fall agenda. As usual, we will con­tribute a pre-budget sub­mis­sion once the process begins with the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance. Bud­get 2012 will be the first major and sys­tem­atic effort by the gov­ern­ment to erase the deficit cre­ated dur­ing the eco­nomic cri­sis. It will reflect the deci­sions taken fur­ther to the on-going Strate­gic and Oper­at­ing Review announced in the March 22 bud­get speech. This is a review process that will take place in total secrecy and will remain so for years to come since it is linked to the bud­getary process (one will remem­ber the fruit­less attempts by the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Her­itage to uncover the rea­sons for the abo­li­tion of the Trade Routes and Pro­mArt pro­grams in 2008). We will also be work­ing with mem­bers and stake­hold­ers for the next round of copy­right reform which as I said, is expected for the fall, with the new bill prob­a­bly passed by Christmas.

From a purely CCA per­spec­tive, we will be plan­ning a series of ten regional forums that will see me cross the coun­try from coast to coast in the fall to update our mem­bers on the CCA’s strate­gic ori­en­ta­tions and to broaden con­sul­ta­tions on pol­icy priorities.

This busy sum­mer sea­son has even more in store in the short run. We are cur­rently inter­view­ing for the posi­tion of Research Intern, a six-month full-time post funded in part­ner­ship with the Cul­tural Human Resources Coun­cil and a gen­er­ous cor­po­rate donor that prefers to remain anony­mous. We will also be recruit­ing a new Pol­icy Advi­sor fur­ther to the depar­ture of Jes­sica Litwin who, after three years of excel­lent work, is mov­ing to Eng­land at the end of the sum­mer. I am sure you will join me in thank­ing her and wish­ing her a great time in London.

More imme­di­ately still, I am prepar­ing for a strat­egy plan­ning meet­ing with our Board of Gov­er­nors and our National Pol­icy Advi­sory Com­mit­tee that will take place on June 20 and 21 in Ottawa. These meet­ings will be fol­lowed by our Annual Gen­eral Meet­ing at Library and Archives Canada on June 21.

Finally, on June 20, we will hold the last install­ment of the first sea­son of our Think­ing Cul­ture forums, a series orga­nized in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa. Titled: Provin­cial Cul­tural Pol­icy: Then and Now, we will hear from three authors of an upcom­ing pub­li­ca­tion on the evo­lu­tion of provin­cial cul­tural pol­icy in Canada. Please join us if you are in Ottawa on that date! Full details will fol­low soon.

I wish to all of you a good, sunny and warm sum­mer, and hope­fully, enough time to recharge the bat­ter­ies in prepa­ra­tion for next fall!