FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: News from the CCA

CCA Bul­letin 18/09

June 29, 2009

 

 

The warm weather seems to have finally arrived to the East­ern part of the coun­try… but with­out the promise of a sum­mer of leisure for the CCA! We have com­pleted our move to our new office space and are emerg­ing from our boxes. Phones are back in order and so is our email, both hav­ing stayed the same despite the change of premises. The CCA Sec­re­tariat is now back in busi­ness after a short inter­rup­tion and will take advan­tage of the sum­mer to plan for what promises to be a busy sched­ule in the fall, with the ever-looming specter of another fed­eral elec­tion within the next sev­eral months!

As if mov­ing the office was not enough, the last two weeks also saw a meet­ing of our Board as well as the Annual Gen­eral Meet­ing of mem­bers (AGM)! The lat­ter was attended by some 25 mem­bers from all over the coun­try, partly thanks to the fact that our sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion, the Cul­tural Human Resources Coun­cil, had syn­chro­nized its own meet­ings with ours. Our new Pres­i­dent, Kath­leen Sharpe, reported that 2008–2009 was a remark­able year for the CCA, dur­ing which the old­est and largest arts and cul­ture umbrella orga­ni­za­tion made impor­tant progress in the refo­cus­ing and rebuild­ing process launched by the Board of Gov­er­nors in 2005. For the first time, the orga­ni­za­tion has started plan­ning on a three year cycle based on the strate­gic align­ment of its activ­i­ties and resources. At the same time, a series of events, some planned, some unfore­seen, con­verged to give the CCA a pro­file it had not attained in some time.

In her report,  Pres­i­dent Sharpe men­tioned that the value of the CCA in pro­vid­ing author­i­ta­tive and non-partisan infor­ma­tion was clearly demon­strated through the pub­lic reac­tion fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion, last sum­mer, of impor­tant arts and cul­ture pro­grams and the impact this issue had over the fed­eral elec­tion. CCA’s analy­ses and elec­tion mate­r­ial were referred to widely and used exten­sively by our mem­ber­ship and beyond. This was demon­strated by the dozens of times the CCA was quoted in the media. Our analy­sis of arts and cul­ture bud­gets under the 39th Par­lia­ment was even quoted dur­ing the French Lead­ers Debate dur­ing the elec­toral campaign!

In terms of activ­i­ties, my own report as National Direc­tor stressed the fact that 2008-09 was a very busy one indeed for the CCA: over fifty bul­letins and three research reports pub­lished in twelve months; sev­eral inter­ven­tions in front of par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees and the Cana­dian Radio-Television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion on a vari­ety of top­ics; a pub­lic debate on Cul­tural Diplo­macy in June 2008 in Toronto; a series of 14 Regional Forums across the coun­try, lead­ing to a Chalmers National Strat­egy Work­shop held in Ottawa in March and attended by over 100 participants.

There is only one somber item against this list of remark­able achieve­ments: the orga­ni­za­tion has ended the year with a $ 45 K deficit, which reflects the fact that despite con­sid­er­able efforts at lim­it­ing expenses and increas­ing rev­enue, the CCA has not yet recov­ered from the 20% cut made in 2006 to its Con­tri­bu­tion Agree­ment with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. On the pos­i­tive side, I has­ten to add that we have adopted a deficit reduc­tion plan which should wipe out this debt within the cur­rent year.

The Board meet­ing which pre­ceded the AGM gave the oppor­tu­nity to the Board to weigh in on the updat­ing of the CCA three-year Strate­gic Plan and to review the research activ­i­ties planned for the com­ing year and beyond. It  was also the occa­sion for us to say good-bye to a most valu­able mem­ber of the CCA team: Keith Kelly, our Senior Pol­icy Advi­sor, has indeed decided that after thir­teen years at the CCA (includ­ing ten as National Direc­tor in the 1990s), it was time for him to pass the torch on. Keith’s inspi­ra­tional depar­ture let­ter was read into the pro­ceed­ings of the AGM, along with our warmest thanks for the ser­vices he has ren­dered to the orga­ni­za­tion. Words of thanks were also extended to our for­mer Pres­i­dent, Robert Spick­ler, whose lead­er­ship and expe­ri­ence helped the CCA through a very dif­fi­cult period of its his­tory. Over the past three and a half years, Robert made an enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion towards putting the CCA back on the road to recov­ery, and for that, we all owe him our gratitude.

The AGM was also the occa­sion to pay trib­ute to two great Cana­di­ans who have recently passed away. The first is CCA’s life­time Hon­orary Mem­ber Paul Siren. As a mem­ber of the Board of Gov­er­nors, in his ser­vice as Vice-President and finally Pres­i­dent of the CCA, Paul Siren helped the orga­ni­za­tion deal with com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial issues in a log­i­cal and timely man­ner.  But even more impor­tantly, the CCA will always be enor­mously grate­ful for the many con­tri­bu­tions that Paul made to the wel­fare of the arts and artists in Canada and around the world. His unfail­ing com­mon sense and wis­dom were rare assets which he used unspar­ingly for the ben­e­fit of oth­ers in the arts and beyond. His col­lab­o­ra­tion with Québec play­wright and actor Gra­tien Géli­nas led Canada to be the first sig­na­tory of the UNESCO Bel­grade Rec­om­men­da­tions on the Sta­tus of the Artist, and to imple­ment leg­is­la­tion at the fed­eral level to pro­mote and pro­tect the socio-economic sta­tus of our artists and creators.

We also mourn the death of the inter­na­tion­ally renowned film­maker Allan King, the recip­i­ent of 2008 Diplôme d’honneur of the CCA. We feel greatly priv­i­leged to have been able to hon­our this lumi­nary of Cana­dian cin­ema at the March 12 Award Cer­e­mony presided over by Sen­a­tor Tommy Banks and at which we also hon­oured the pres­i­dent of Cul­ture Mon­tréal, Simon Brault, who received the Keith Kelly Award for Cul­tural Lead­er­ship.

On the eve of Canada Day and of well-deserved breaks for all of you, let me wish you a good sum­mer. Rest assured that the CCA will be con­tinue to work on your behalf through­out the sum­mer months, as we pre­pare our annual fed­eral bud­get sub­mis­sion and pur­sue the cul­tural strate­gic plan­ning ini­ti­ated in the wake of the March 2009 meetings.