FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: What’s up at the CCA?

CCA Bul­letin 32/07

Sep­tem­ber 26, 2007

Many of you may be won­der­ing if the CCA has left for sum­mer hol­i­days and not returned, since com­mu­ni­ca­tions over the past few weeks have been few in-between. I can assure you that noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth: the prob­lem is that we have been so busy over the past three months that we can barely keep you informed of all the work under­way on behalf of the arts and cul­tural sector!

Through­out the sum­mer, the Sec­re­tariat of the CCA has been hard at work prepar­ing for a very busy fall sea­son. First of all, the annual fed­eral pre-budget sub­mis­sion has been writ­ten and sent to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance in prepa­ra­tion for our appear­ance in a few weeks. The focus is strongly on fund­ing issues, espe­cially the renewal of the pro­grams’ enve­lope for­merly known as Tomor­row Starts Today.

After inter­ven­ing in the Canada Coun­cil con­sul­ta­tion process on its 2008–2011 Strate­gic Plan, we were pleas­antly sur­prised by the unex­pected announce­ment by the for­mer Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage Hon. Bev Oda that $30 mil­lion had been added to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts (CAC) on a per­ma­nent basis. Then of course, the Cab­i­net shuf­fle gave us a new Her­itage Min­is­ter, Ms Josée Verner. The bud­get increase  of the CAC is wel­come news and reduces some­what the anx­i­ety about the direc­tion of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in deal­ing with the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. As for the Cab­i­net shuf­fle, we have taken a look at the tea leaves and have con­cluded that based on the past 18 months, it is still pretty much impos­si­ble to say what agenda the gov­ern­ment may have regard­ing arts and culture.

With Par­lia­ment in recess for five months, there has been lit­tle activ­ity of sig­nif­i­cance for the cul­tural sec­tor com­ing from the Hill or from gov­ern­ment. Most of the action has been in fact con­cen­trated in what is tra­di­tion­ally known as broad­cast­ing, where the reg­u­la­tor has been pil­ing dead­lines over dead­lines. The Cana­dian Radio-television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (CRTC) has indeed kept us hop­ping with calls for hear­ings and com­ments on a vari­ety of issues, almost each poten­tially affect­ing one way or another the inter­ests of artists, cre­ators and arts pro­fes­sion­als at large, both in the long and short term. We will pro­vide you with more details on the fun­da­men­tal issues cur­rently debated in front of the CRTC in our next bulletin.

On the par­lia­men­tary agenda, we look for­ward to the Octo­ber 16 Speech from Throne and — who knows for sure! — to the long-awaited tabling of the next phase of revi­sions to the Copy­right Act …unless of course the Throne Speech leads to an elec­tion, which will prompt a shift of our imme­di­ate pri­or­i­ties. We are also wait­ing for the Supreme Court rul­ing (link) on reg­is­tered national ath­letic orga­ni­za­tions to dis­cern any pos­si­ble impact on national arts ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions and all arts and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions with char­i­ta­ble status.

In the midst of all this, the Sec­re­tariat has been plan­ning a one-day sym­po­sium on the Role of the Arts in Pub­lic Diplo­macy.  This event will take place in Mon­treal on Novem­ber 22, 2007 at the Uni­ver­sité du Québec à Mon­tréal. CCA staff has been busy con­sult­ing experts in the field and recruit­ing inter­na­tion­ally respected resource peo­ple to inject the dis­cus­sions with new ideas and best prac­tices from across Canada and around the world. Con­tact­ing these indi­vid­u­als dur­ing the sum­mer has made for some vig­or­ous rounds of tele­phone tag and email salvos!

In advance of the Sym­po­sium, the CCA will be releas­ing to par­tic­i­pants to the event a back­ground paper pre­pared by Rachael Maxwell who com­pleted a three month intern­ship with the CCA this past spring. Rachael’s excel­lent paper offers a broad per­spec­tive on the evo­lu­tion of pub­lic diplo­macy around the world and in Canada, par­tic­u­larly over the past 60 years. It will help to inspire forward-looking and con­struc­tive dis­cus­sions, which is the objec­tive of the Symposium.

In par­al­lel with these activ­i­ties, the Sec­re­tariat of the CCA is devel­op­ing a three-year strate­gic and finan­cial plan in con­sul­ta­tion with the Board of Gov­er­nors. This multi-year action plan will pro­vide the back­ground in our search for the resources required to ful­fill the CCA’s unique mis­sion with regards to arts and cul­ture in Canada.

We also wel­come three new Board mem­bers: from Mon­tréal, Louise Poulin , art con­sul­tant, pres­i­dent of ArtsExperts.ca, and from Toronto, Kath­leen Sharpe, arts man­ager, Direc­tor of the Ontario Cul­tural Attrac­tions Fund (OCAF) , and Jason van Eyk, arts man­ager, per­former, and music instruc­tor and Ontario Regional Direc­tor for the Cana­dian Music Cen­tre. The exper­tise of these new mem­bers will be most valu­able as we move for­ward in the refo­cus­ing process started two years ago by the Board.

Finally, I would like to sig­nal the arrival in early August of our new Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer, Line Dezainde, who comes to us with a remark­able level of exper­tise and an incred­i­ble level of energy and ded­i­ca­tion. You can expect a num­ber of improve­ments in our elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the com­ing months!

As you can see, life con­tin­ues apace at the CCA and soon you will likely be del­uged with a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ca­tions as Par­lia­ment returns. If you have any ques­tions or if you wish to iden­tify an issue you think war­rants the atten­tion of the CCA please let us know.