From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — January 10, 2012

VICTORIA — Well, it’s on! After weeks of prepa­ra­tion, my cross-country con­sul­ta­tion tour started yes­ter­day in British Colum­bia where I am spend­ing the week. I must con­fess that after the snow and cold we’ve had in Ottawa these past weeks, it is agree­ably exotic to forego boots and scarf: it’s a pleas­ant 8° C in Vic­to­ria and the rain seems pleas­antly spring-like to some­one from the East­ern part of the country.

Why this pan-Canadian tour which will take me to 14 cities between now and Feb­ru­ary 18? First and fore­most to val­i­date with cul­tural com­mu­ni­ties from across our vast nation the strate­gic pil­lars and ini­tia­tives devel­oped over the past six months to rein­vent the busi­ness model of the CCA and make it finan­cially self-supporting by 2014–15. This deci­sion was taken enthu­si­as­ti­cally by our Board of Gov­er­nors and embraced by staff at the Sec­re­tariat: it stems from the expected deci­sion by the gov­ern­ment to put an end to 45 years of annual fed­eral fund­ing for the Con­fer­ence. I say expected since we have not yet been offi­cially informed, but it does seem to be a done deal. This is why, at the prompt­ing of Her­itage offi­cials, we applied for tran­si­tion fund­ing last Sep­tem­ber, as it quickly became clear that such sup­port would be absolutely essen­tial to the devel­op­ment of a strate­gic plan lead­ing to self-sufficiency. We are rea­son­ably con­fi­dent that we will receive this fund­ing, but it is unlikely that we will know for sure until the March fed­eral bud­get. Of course, this does not pre­vent us from work­ing full-tilt to ensure that the CCA remains rel­e­vant to its mem­bers after 67 years and to rally as many sup­port­ers as possible.

So, it is full of enthu­si­asm that I started on this win­ter trek which will take me from the softer climes of Vic­to­ria to the unpre­dictable weather of Hal­i­fax and St John’s, New­found­land. Enthu­si­asm and, I must admit, a cer­tain queasi­ness, as criss-crossing our great coun­try in win­ter time is to take a gam­ble even our politi­cians try to avoid. Gen­eral elec­tions are quite rarely held at this time of year!

Con­sul­ta­tions have started on a pos­i­tive note. Eigh­teen peo­ple gath­ered yes­ter­day at the Bel­fry The­atre in Vic­to­ria at the invi­ta­tion of Gen­eral Man­ager, Ivan Habel, who sits on the CCA Board since last June and whom I thank for his pre­cious help in orga­niz­ing my visit here. I made a 30-minute pre­sen­ta­tion based on the two-page doc­u­ment Shap­ing Canada’s vibrant future for arts and cul­ture (to be made avail­able on-line shortly). This text is the result of a CCA strate­gic ses­sion last Octo­ber and of con­sul­ta­tions held in Mon­tréal, Toronto and Ottawa in Novem­ber and Decem­ber. Fol­low­ing my pre­sen­ta­tion, we had an open dis­cus­sion on the var­i­ous ser­vices put for­ward for con­sid­er­a­tion by par­tic­i­pants, most of whom did not know much about the CCA prior to the meet­ing. What drove home the value of the CCA as a unique tool for the cul­tural sec­tor was the work done recently on the copy­right file and the issue of char­i­ta­ble sta­tus. I noted a clear inter­est in the idea of cre­at­ing links with regional affil­i­ates, some­thing which would allow the CCA to have a truly national view of pol­icy issues debated in Ottawa. There was also inter­est in shar­ing infor­ma­tion as to what is hap­pen­ing in other provinces. All in all, I could not have hoped for a bet­ter warm­ing up session!

This morn­ing, I meet with the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the BC Arts Coun­cil, Ms.Gillian Wood. BCAC is the only Arts Coun­cil out­side of Ontario to have main­tained its sup­port of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts and this has a very impor­tant sym­bolic value for us. It is my hope that we can extend the same sort of rela­tion­ship in one form or another with other exist­ing provin­cial councils.

I leave for Van­cou­ver in a few hours where a sim­i­lar con­sul­ta­tion meet­ing has been orga­nized by our part­ners at the Van­cou­ver Arts and Cul­ture Alliance. I will also be giv­ing a work­shop on Rev­enue Canada’s con­sul­ta­tion on pro­posed guide­lines on reg­is­tra­tion as char­i­ties of arts organ­i­sa­tions. This work­shop, pre­pared at the invi­ta­tion of our friend lawyer Martha Rans, will be offered to other cities I visit dur­ing my tour of the country.

I will be back with another blog on Fri­day, once my visit to Van­cou­ver is com­pleted. You can also fol­low me via Twit­ter.