CCA Bul­letin 41/06

Sep­tem­ber 29, 2006

As the week­end approaches, I am reflect­ing on one of the busiest weeks I have expe­ri­enced since becom­ing National Direc­tor of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts.

The week kicked off with the details of the bil­lion dol­lar real­lo­ca­tion exer­cise. Our staff pored over every item on the list to assess the impact these reduc­tions would have on the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. As the week winds down, we are still look­ing for insights into some of the items on the list which remain rather vague despite sev­eral attempts to obtain clar­i­fi­ca­tion. It has been brought to my atten­tion that in the flurry of activ­i­ties, we made a mis­take in ref­er­ence to the cut to the vol­un­tary sec­tor and I would like to cor­rect this right now. Con­trary to what we said, the cut of $90 mil­lion dol­lars con­cerns the Canada Vol­un­teerism Ini­tia­tive and not Vol­un­teer Canada, an orga­ni­za­tion which has nei­ther been elim­i­nated nor is an ini­tia­tive of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment! I apol­o­gize for the con­fu­sion created.

The bil­lion dol­lar announce­ment set the stage for an appear­ance by our Pres­i­dent Robert Spick­ler and myself at the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance for the 2007 fed­eral bud­get con­sul­ta­tions. Our sub­mis­sion was writ­ten in August, long before the details of the spend­ing cuts were known. While the CCA called for increased invest­ment and sup­port for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, oppo­si­tion mem­bers were mainly con­cerned about the impact that the bil­lion dol­lar cuts would have on the sec­tor. Our appear­ance will be cov­ered in more details in our next bul­letin. Let me just say for the moment that our par­tic­i­pa­tion did not go unno­ticed and that we got sev­eral ques­tions from all parties.

Com­ing out of this par­tic­u­lar exer­cise and read­ing the Ottawa tea leaves, it seems pretty clear to me that hold­ing the line is prob­a­bly the best that we can hope for at the moment, and that our prin­ci­pal task is one of jus­ti­fy­ing ongo­ing finan­cial sup­port by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. We must con­vince our politi­cians that the arts and cul­ture sec­tor bring broad ben­e­fits to mil­lions of Cana­di­ans in all parts of the coun­try and present an image of Canada as a sophis­ti­cated and diverse soci­ety to the rest of the world. This must be done before the next bil­lion dol­lars is extracted from the fed­eral budget.

In a sim­i­lar vein, I rep­re­sented the CCA in a hear­ing of the Blue Rib­bon Panel on Grants and Con­tri­bu­tions. Imag­ine Canada, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion for the not for profit and vol­un­tary sec­tor, had arranged and coor­di­nated the hear­ing which saw vol­un­tary and civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions present a united front on the crit­i­cal value of fed­eral gov­ern­ment sup­port for these orga­ni­za­tions, on the impor­tance of pre­dictable fund­ing and of full cost recov­ery in project fund­ing, and on the impor­tance of light­en­ing the over account­abil­ity to which not for profit orga­ni­za­tions are cur­rently sub­ject. New ideas were put for­ward, like the impor­tance of devel­op­ing a global strat­egy for the not for profit sec­tor and explor­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of cre­at­ing a new fund­ing instru­ment like the Canada Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion, which would com­ple­ment but not replace the grants and con­tri­bu­tion sys­tem actu­ally in place. The pre­sen­ta­tion was extremely well received by Panel mem­bers who said it was the best struc­tured and most valu­able con­tri­bu­tion they had heard so far.

On another front, we also raced to meet the Sep­tem­ber 27 for sub­mis­sion dead­line to the CRTC on its review of some ele­ments of the Over the Air Tele­vi­sion Pol­icy. These are very impor­tant delib­er­a­tions and the CCA and many of our mem­bers share deep con­cerns about the ongo­ing com­mit­ment of the CRTC to the invest­ment by all broad­cast­ers and broad­cast dis­tri­b­u­tion under­tak­ings to the fund­ing and pro­duc­tion of Cana­dian con­tent. The CCA has asked to par­tic­i­pate in the hear­ing sched­uled to start on Novem­ber 27 in Gatineau . This will also be cov­ered in some greater detail in an upcom­ing bul­letin. If you can’t wait to hear, you can always look at our full brief on our web­site, eas­ier to access than on the CRTC website!

The CCA has also been invited to appear on Octo­ber 4 th before the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Jus­tice and Con­sti­tu­tional Affairs to address our con­cerns with the Account­abil­ity Act cur­rently under scrutiny by the Sen­ate. The CCA wrote to each Sen­a­tor this sum­mer to express our hope that the Hon­ourable Sen­a­tors would tackle the study of this Bill with due dili­gence. The CCA shares the con­cerns of other not-for-profit orga­ni­za­tions and of other ele­ments of Cana­dian soci­ety that pro­vi­sions in this leg­is­la­tion could have a seri­ous neg­a­tive effect on the pub­lic pol­icy devel­op­ment process and over­all rela­tions with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, pub­lic ser­vants and Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans alike.

The CCA team is some­what naively look­ing for­ward to a break this week­end, even though James Mis­sen is attend­ing the Copy­camp event in Toronto . This will help us develop CCA’s posi­tions as we await the release of the draft leg­is­la­tion on copy­right revi­sions promised for this fall.

Oh, do we live in inter­est­ing times or what!