CCA Bul­letin 01/07

Jan­u­ary 10, 2007

As I start my sec­ond year at the helm of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA), I would like to take a moment to review with you what we have accom­plished over the past year… and what a very busy and chal­leng­ing year 2006 turned out to be!

The main objec­tive of the CCA’s Board and Sec­re­tariat over 2006 was to refo­cus on the core mis­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion, as decided by the Board at its meet­ings in Sep­tem­ber 2005. This refo­cussing, encap­su­lated in the recently refor­mu­lated Mis­sion State­ment of the CCA, can be found in the con­sid­er­able amount of infor­ma­tion, analy­sis, and advo­cacy work deliv­ered by the CCA over the whole cal­en­dar year.

From the acclaimed infor­ma­tion pro­duced dur­ing the last fed­eral elec­tion, to the two suc­cess­ful con­fer­ences held in Ottawa in March 2006, to the numer­ous activ­i­ties in many fed­eral gov­ern­ment forums for fund­ing artists and the arts, as well as sev­eral inter­ven­tions in front of the CRTC on the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of Cana­dian cul­ture, CCA’s pres­ence and mes­sages have been noted and often well-received.

Yet much more work remains to be done, par­tic­u­larly with regards to the ade­quate fund­ing of the arts via an increased bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts.  This is an issue for which the CCA has been active both on its own, and through its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cana­dian Arts Coali­tion; the ongo­ing cam­paign will require sus­tained action to sen­si­tize the Gov­ern­ment to the real needs of the sector.

Com­plete, timely, and reli­able infor­ma­tion on cul­tural pol­icy issues is the CCA’s main out­put and we con­tinue to pay spe­cial atten­tion to our exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions.  The 54 bul­letins pro­duced in 2006 have cov­ered a large num­ber of pri­or­ity pol­icy issues for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, and I am per­son­ally proud to say that they have gen­er­ated a flurry of unso­licited pos­i­tive com­ments from var­i­ous quarters.

To sup­port the enriched sub­stance of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the CCA has refor­mat­ted its bul­letins to make them more read­ily acces­si­ble.  With the appro­pri­ate elec­tronic links imbed­ded in our bul­letins, com­bined with our web­site (www.ccarts.ca) and elec­tronic mag­a­zine, CCA’s @gora, we are con­tin­u­ing to build a pub­licly acces­si­ble, 21st cen­tury research tool on cul­tural pol­icy issues in Canada.

To accom­plish this as effi­ciently as pos­si­ble, the CCA’s Sec­re­tariat has been under­go­ing a com­plete review of its work­flows, struc­ture, and job descrip­tions.  Sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tions of effi­ciency have led us to work closely with other ele­ments of civil soci­ety, for exam­ple on the fed­eral bud­get and on the Fed­eral Account­abil­ity Act (FAA).

Based on the feed­back we are get­ting – and in some cases, the gen­er­ous dona­tions that come with the encour­ag­ing words! – it would appear that the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance of the CCA is being reasserted, even after 60 years of changes in the Cana­dian cul­tural envi­ron­ment.  As the unique con­tri­bu­tion of the CCA to an open cul­tural pol­icy debate is increas­ingly rec­og­nized, we must now turn our atten­tion to pro­vid­ing the orga­ni­za­tion with the tools required to deliver what is right­fully expected of it.

Like many oth­ers in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, the CCA is finan­cially chal­lenged.  For the past 30 years, the orga­ni­za­tion has relied to var­i­ous extent on the financ­ing it receives from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, while often still remain­ing under­funded to deliver its man­date ade­quately. Mem­ber­ship fees have not been revis­ited for almost 15 years while the cost of the ser­vices we pro­vide have gone up, despite our con­tin­u­ing efforts at achiev­ing greater effi­cien­cies. This year, the fund­ing received through the Depart­ment of Her­itage has been cut by 20% because of the advo­cacy aspects of our work – an issue on which we have ini­ti­ated a dia­logue with the Minister.

The CCA Board and Sec­re­tariat are cur­rently work­ing on fac­ing these finan­cial chal­lenges for the years to come.  Indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional mem­ber­ship fees are going to be adjusted in the new fis­cal year start­ing in April, and new resources and part­ner­ships will be sought.  Dona­tions, which have grown sig­nif­i­cantly this fis­cal year and for which we are most thank­ful, will be pur­sued vigourously. The results of this work, along­side the results of an ongo­ing Board eval­u­a­tion of the CCA’s cur­rent gov­er­nance model, will be com­mu­ni­cated to mem­bers and sup­port­ers in the com­ing weeks and months.

These var­i­ous inter­nal chal­lenges will pro­vide the back­drop for our pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in 2007 in what looks to be a very impor­tant polit­i­cal period for the Cana­dian cul­tural sec­tor.  Fun­da­men­tal issues are cur­rently on the table in a num­ber of pol­icy files which, jointly and sev­er­ally, have impor­tant con­se­quences for the sec­tor. Copy­right leg­is­la­tion, for­eign own­er­ship, the role of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in cul­ture and the tools it uses to ful­fill this role, the role of reg­u­la­tion to pro­tect and pro­mote Cana­dian cul­ture at home and abroad, the review of the man­dates of the CRTC and of the CBC, the long-overdue Museum Pol­icy, the increased and sta­ble fund­ing of the Canada Coun­cil and of the pro­gram “Tomor­row Starts Today”, the place of arts and cul­ture in Cana­dian diplo­macy, all of these issues — and no doubt more! — will be on our agenda for the com­ing months.  To make things more com­plex, the tim­ing of these debates depends very much on a polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that may or may not get more sta­ble after a fed­eral elec­tion expected most likely within the next sev­eral months.

Based on the results of the past year, I can say that the CCA Board and Sec­re­tariat face these numer­ous chal­lenges with con­fi­dence.  We all believe pas­sion­ately in the unique mis­sion of the CCA and we remain deeply com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing that man­date.  We are con­fi­dent that if we work hard, we will get the sup­port our mis­sion deserves for, along­side health, secu­rity and pros­per­ity, what is more impor­tant to a nation than its cul­tural identity?

My very best wishes to all for 2007!  And let us work closely together for the greater good of Cana­dian artists and culture.