Media Centre

Editor’s Note

Is it pos­si­ble to tra­verse a coun­try that does not end with­out per­ceiv­ing ghosts? Yves Thériault,Tayaout, son of Agaguk   As Alain Pineau has been telling you in his most recent blogs, we have numer­ous projects in devel­op­ment at the moment. One of the projects that I have been work­ing on lately is search­ing for con­trib­u­tors for our mag­a­zine. I know few peo­ple who have time to read every­thing and under­stand the issues and browse through hun­dreds of pages of reports and stud­ies, so we have...

Beware of Amazon

By Dou­glas Gibson   Most read­ers are aware that Ama­zon is becom­ing an increas­ing force in the book busi­ness. Very few are aware just how dom­i­nant it is becom­ing. In fact, the adjec­tive “dom­i­nat­ing” seems appro­pri­ate here. As in “bul­ly­ing”. Let me explain how this has affected me, as a Cana­dian author. In Feb­ru­ary of this year Ama­zon was engaged in re-negotiating its terms with the IPG organ­i­sa­tion. IPG is a North Amer­i­can dis­trib­u­tor that han­dles scores of pub­lish­ers,...

Arts and Education

By John Hobday The first CCA con­fer­ence that I attended was in late 1967. As I recall the three key top­ics of con­cern were:  the lack of ade­quate gov­ern­ment sup­port to build on the suc­cess of Cen­ten­nial Year; the fail­ure of the media to pro­vide suf­fi­cient cov­er­age of the arts; and the lack of empha­sis on arts edu­ca­tion in our schools. Since then, the qual­ity and quan­tity of arts edu­ca­tion in Canada has, with a few excep­tions, diminished. Study after study that I have read, con­fer­ence after...

Annual General Meeting

Dear Members of the Canadian Conference of the Arts,

It is with pleasure that I invite you to the Canadian Conference of the Arts’ Annual General Meeting which will take place in Ottawa on Monday, June 18, 2012 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm at the Capital Hill Hotel, 88 Albert Street (between Elgin and Metcalfe).

Given the current challenges facing the CCA, this will give you an opportunity to meet the Board of Governors, and to be informed on the CCA’s activities, plans, priorities and progress so far...

Fallout from the Federal Budget… Continues

CCA Bulletin 08/12

The CCA continues to identify the cultural impacts of federal budget. On April 30th, several departments and agencies announced a third wave of cuts to the federal public service. Today, the statistics we need and impacts on collective memory.

Other Consequences of the Federal Budget

CCA Bulletin 07/12

In the wake of the budget presented on March 29, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled yesterday a Bill that puts into place some the budget initiatives. Food inspection has attracted a great deal of attention but in the cultural sector there are two measures in particular that we would like to highlight.

The Realities of the Economic Crisis in the EU – What are the Impacts for the Cultural Sector?

The words “aus­ter­ity pro­gram” have become the most repeated col­lo­ca­tion across all of Europe. Major cuts to cul­ture are a real­ity in many Euro­pean gov­ern­ments and relaxed Euro­peans are being forced to adopt this new word “aus­ter­ity”. What are the actual impacts? France and Germany France and Ger­many are the only two coun­tries that do not plan on cut­ting cul­tural fund­ing. Sur­pris­ingly the bud­get for the Min­istry in France has increased by 0.9% com­pared to 2011, for a total increase of...

Telefilm Canada: The Impacts Remain Difficult to Evaluate

In 2011–2012 Tele­film received $105.7 mil­lion from the Her­itage Depart­ment. For 2012–2013, their bud­get will be cut $10.6 mil­lion over 3 years, a reduc­tion of 10%. Since last sum­mer, the gov­ern­ment has been telling agen­cies that they will need to cut 5–10% from their bud­gets. If observers weren’t sur­prised by the cuts to CBC – they were announced and expected from many mem­bers of gov­ern­ment – the cuts to Tele­film and NFB caused a bit more sur­prise. Some have won­dered if the other audio-visual...

Special Budget Edition: A First Look at the Federal Budget

We are very proud to present this spe­cial fed­eral bud­get edi­tion. Our in depth bud­get analy­sis will be pub­lished in a few weeks when the Her­itage Min­is­ter pub­lishes the esti­mates and report on plans and pri­or­i­ties. Nor­mally the gov­ern­ment announces the plans and pri­or­i­ties before the fed­eral bud­get drops, but not this year. Spe­cific impacts are begin­ning to emerge as to which pro­grams are being main­tained, but there is no guar­an­tee that pri­or­i­ties will remain the same. Sev­eral...

National Arts Center

Of the eight orga­ni­za­tions that were cut in the recent fed­eral bud­get, the reduc­tions to the National Arts Cen­tre have received very lit­tle reac­tion. The cut­backs to the orga­ni­za­tion may have been over­shad­owed by the much larger cuts to the CBC and the Her­itage Depart­ment and the fact that fund­ing was main­tained for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. However the cuts of $1.9 mil­lion over 3 years add up to just over 5% of the NAC’s bud­get — and this does not include hav­ing to cover infla­tion on...