Arts, Culture and a National Digital Strategy

CCA Bul­letin 18/10

July 12, 2010

 

Just the facts

In a brief filed as part of the nation-wide con­sul­ta­tion launched last May, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) urges the gov­ern­ment to make con­tent cre­ation a cen­tre­piece of the national strat­egy for the dig­i­tal econ­omy. The con­sul­ta­tion, which was due to end on July 9, has been extended to July 13, midnight.

The CCA’s fun­da­men­tal approach to a national strat­egy is based on the belief that infra­struc­ture, wires, cables and cor­po­ra­tions will not be enough to sus­tain a robust dig­i­tal econ­omy, let alone a vibrant dig­i­tal soci­ety, if con­tent cre­ators are not included in this strat­egy. Canada’s dig­i­tal econ­omy relies on the exper­tise of its cre­ative work­ers. Their con­tent cre­ation must be encour­aged by a national strat­egy, pro­tected by reg­u­la­tions, sup­ported by appro­pri­ate train­ing and dis­trib­uted on as many dig­i­tal plat­forms as possible.

There are four main issues that the CCA believes should be con­sid­ered in form­ing a national strat­egy for a dig­i­tal economy:

• For­eign own­er­ship: In order to form a pros­per­ous dig­i­tal econ­omy and soci­ety, Canada must retain own­er­ship of its cul­tural indus­tries, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and dig­i­tal content.

• Intel­lec­tual prop­erty: Our cre­ators want to share their sto­ries on the largest pos­si­ble plat­forms – and that includes the dig­i­tal realm. How­ever, cre­ators must do so in the safety of know­ing that they will be paid for the use of their prod­ucts, whether solely online, or in the trans­fer of their prod­uct to other exported media outlets.

• Cana­dian com­mu­ni­ties: The strat­egy must pro­vide tools to com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­larly to smaller urban cen­tres and to our rural and North­ern com­mu­ni­ties. Dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture, access to fed­eral pro­grams and con­tent cre­ation must have a community-based focus for a holis­tic dig­i­tal econ­omy structure.

• Train­ing for cre­ators: As a nation, we must invest in knowl­edge trans­fer pro­grams and appren­tice­ships as well as in the con­stant renewal of pro­fes­sional skills in cul­tural indus­tries and in the arts.

Tell me more

The CCA con­sid­ers that this con­sul­ta­tion is most impor­tant for Cana­di­ans and that the pre­oc­cu­pa­tions it raises go well beyond the econ­omy. The CCA feels that the scope of the reflec­tion should be broad­ened to include the devel­op­ment of a national strat­egy for a Cana­dian dig­i­tal soci­ety. Con­ver­sa­tions so far have been largely dom­i­nated by pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with invest­ments in infra­struc­ture, bit rates and acces­si­bil­ity to Cana­di­ans as con­sumers. Though build­ing ade­quate infra­struc­ture is an impor­tant com­po­nent of a dig­i­tal strat­egy, the CCA believes that ensur­ing the avail­abil­ity of qual­ity Cana­dian con­tent on new dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms is an objec­tive that requires equal atten­tion. A national strat­egy must ensure the pres­ence of Cana­dian con­tent in order for the infra­struc­ture to bear mean­ing to Cana­di­ans and reflect them as a bilin­gual nation with increas­ingly diver­si­fied cul­tural sources.

Though invest­ing in the cul­tural sec­tor may seem less con­crete than invest­ing in infra­struc­ture, soft­ware or man­u­fac­tur­ing, it is a sec­tor which has proven to give strong returns on gov­ern­ment funds. The sec­tor con­tin­u­ally evolves in order to increase its pres­ence within Canada, but also to build robust dig­i­tal audi­ences around the world.

The con­tri­bu­tion made by Cana­dian artists and cre­ators goes beyond eco­nomic fac­tors. Our cul­tural expres­sions con­tribute to our iden­tity as a nation and to our rep­u­ta­tion on the inter­na­tional stage. Cul­ture pro­vides sup­port to our for­eign pol­icy and trade objec­tives. Addi­tion­ally, the increas­ing diver­sity of our pop­u­la­tion offers a unique oppor­tu­nity for Canada to lever­age this pre­cious nat­ural resource to make a really dis­tinc­tive impres­sion in the world.

Many cul­tural indus­tries and insti­tu­tions already works dig­i­tally:  film, tele­vi­sion, music, new media, pub­lish­ing and muse­ums have all embraced new tech­nolo­gies and explored new busi­ness models. Their future suc­cesses depend not only on their flex­i­bil­ity and inven­tive­ness, but also on the sup­port the gov­ern­ment can pro­vide through all of the instru­ments at its dis­posal, be it invest­ments in pro­duc­tion, reg­u­la­tion, tax­a­tion or train­ing.

The CCA insists on the impor­tance of retain­ing Cana­dian own­er­ship and effec­tive con­trol of our cul­tural indus­tries and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. Over the past two decades, Canada has allowed a grow­ing con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship in our cul­tural indus­tries in the name of mak­ing them stronger and bet­ter equipped to com­pete in a global envi­ron­ment. We now have huge Cana­dian con­glom­er­ates with inter­ests in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, broad­cast­ing, spe­cialty ser­vices, news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, pub­lish­ing, music and book dis­tri­b­u­tion. Given this con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and the con­ver­gence of tech­nolo­gies, open­ing up for­eign own­er­ship and con­trol of our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions can only lead to tremen­dous pres­sures to enable a sim­i­lar model in cable and broad­cast­ing. Cou­pled with the poten­tial impact of trade nego­ti­a­tions, this could result in severe con­se­quences for Cana­dian cul­tural sov­er­eignty. Like the Chair of the CRTC, Kon­rad von Finck­en­stein, the CCA believes that it is vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to change for­eign own­er­ship rules in tele­coms and shield the broad­cast­ing sec­tor from the con­se­quences of doing so.

The devel­op­ment of a mean­ing­ful dig­i­tal strat­egy must occur in tan­dem with new copy­right pol­icy. Canada’s deci­sion mak­ers must rec­og­nize the impor­tance of our cre­ators’ intel­lec­tual prop­erty and develop a dig­i­tal land­scape which fos­ters cre­ation, expres­sion, dis­sem­i­na­tion and pro­tec­tion. Our cre­ators want to share their sto­ries on the largest pos­si­ble plat­form – and that includes the dig­i­tal realm. How­ever, cre­ators must do so in the safety of know­ing that they will be paid for the use of their prod­ucts, whether solely online, or in the trans­fer of their prod­uct to other exported media outlets.

In June, the gov­ern­ment tabled for first read­ing in the House of Com­mons Bill C-32,  an Act to mod­ern­ize the Cana­dian Copy­right Act. The CCA agrees with the fairly unan­i­mous reac­tion on the artists’ and per­form­ers’ side which stip­u­lates that this bill does noth­ing to sup­port Cana­dian cre­ators by mak­ing pri­vate copy­ing legal with­out any form of fair com­pen­sa­tion for artists and by extend­ing exemp­tions while killing the pri­vate copy­ing levy.

A national dig­i­tal strat­egy must include space for fund­ing and returns for Canada’s com­mu­ni­ties.  This strat­egy can­not be focused around the sole eco­nomic con­tri­bu­tion of large urban cen­tres and the return to share­hold­ers of Inter­net and wire­less ser­vice providers. We must also acknowl­edge the impor­tance of empow­er­ing Cana­di­ans to use the infra­struc­ture they will end up financ­ing. The strat­egy must pro­vide tools to smaller urban cen­tres and to our rural and North­ern communities.

This is why the CCA fully sup­ports the pro­posal of the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­nity Tele­vi­sion Users and Sta­tions (CACTUS) cur­rently in front of the CRTC for deci­sion. This pro­posal is a well-thought out plan which could imple­ment a key com­po­nent of the national dig­i­tal econ­omy. The cre­ation of approx­i­mately 250 multi-media com­mu­nity cen­tres as pro­posed by CACTUS is very much in tune with the cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal and social envi­ron­ment Cana­di­ans live in. This approach has been rec­og­nized by other coun­tries as cen­tral to a coher­ent dig­i­tal strat­egy, notably by the Euro­pean Union and the U.S.

At the same time, such cen­tres would con­tribute sig­nif­i­cantly to the diver­sity of voices in Cana­dian soci­ety, a key objec­tive of the Broad­cast­ing Act and a press­ing pre­oc­cu­pa­tion in an envi­ron­ment char­ac­ter­ized by a high con­cen­tra­tion of tra­di­tional media. Multi-media cen­tres and the train­ing pro­grams attached to them would empower ordi­nary cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­larly the younger and older gen­er­a­tions.  They would pro­vide the local arts, her­itage and edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ties with an impor­tant grass­roots tool to, amongst other things, sen­si­tize Cana­di­ans to the impor­tance of cul­ture in their lives.

Finally, artists and cul­tural work­ers must be able to evolve and adapt their train­ing and employ­ment needs given this flex­i­ble and inno­v­a­tive econ­omy. With a retir­ing cadre of pro­fes­sion­als in Canada’s short-term future, we must invest in knowl­edge trans­fer pro­grams, men­tor­ships and appren­tice­ships in cul­tural indus­tries and in the arts.

More­over, in an ever-changing tech­no­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment, it is cru­cial that like other work­ers in the cre­ative econ­omy, artists keep their skills up to date (e.g. motion cap­ture for per­form­ers and 3-D tech­nolo­gies for cam­era oper­a­tors and cin­e­matog­ra­phers). Since an over­whelm­ing num­ber of artists are self employed, they do not cur­rently qual­ify for exist­ing pro­grams. They are nonethe­less an impor­tant com­po­nent of the cre­ative econ­omy and it is cru­cial that the gov­ern­ment rec­og­nizes that fact by invest­ing in var­i­ous train­ing pro­grams so that artists can con­tribute fully in this new envi­ron­ment. A well-trained cre­ative work­force is a resource which will never run dry.

What can I do?

Make sure the gov­ern­ment and the three Min­is­ters directly con­cerned, James Moore, Tony Clement and Diane Fin­ley, hear loud and clear from artists and con­tent cre­ators what is needed to ensure that Cana­di­ans have access to their own cul­ture in the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment. Also, don’t miss an oppor­tu­nity to sen­si­tize your own MP.