CCA GETS TO KNOW ITS NEIGHBOURS, THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF CANADA

CCA BULLETIN / BULLETIN DE LA CCA

Ottawa , June 11, 2004 — The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts shares the same Ottawa office build­ing with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party of Canada (we’re on the 8 th floor at 130 Albert and they’re on the 17 th , for any­one keep­ing track).   Given this, we made sev­eral efforts lead­ing up to the fed­eral elec­tion to intro­duce our­selves to our neigh­bours in order to tell them of the impor­tance of the work that CCA and its indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional mem­bers do, and to learn more about the new party and their policies.

We are not the only ones to find the cur­rent incar­na­tion of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party some­thing of an enigma.   For instance, a June 9th Globe and Mail edi­to­r­ial referred to a “hid­den agenda” due to the party’s lack of clar­ity on a num­ber of issues.   In addi­tion, their plat­form bud­get high­lights the tax cuts the party is propos­ing, but doesn’t iden­tify where the cor­re­spond­ing cuts in gov­ern­ment spend­ing will be made.

In an attempt to elicit spe­cific answers to our ques­tions, CCA has now held a proper “con­ver­sa­tion” with the Con­ser­v­a­tives, in the form of var­i­ous tele­phone calls and emails over the past cou­ple of weeks.   Most note­wor­thy are the answers to four ques­tions posed to senior Con­ser­v­a­tive pol­icy advi­sors, which are included below, unedited.   The party’s responses cast light on their shad­owy posi­tion on arts and cul­ture fund­ing and pol­icy, since their offi­cial plat­form makes no men­tion of it whatsoever.

CCA :   “Would a Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment com­mit to renewal of the fund­ing enve­lope for cul­ture which has been known as ‘Tomor­row Starts Today’?  This was a $560 mil­lion, three year ini­tia­tive announced by the Lib­er­als in May 2001; it was renewed for a fur­ther year (fis­cal 2004-05).  It includes addi­tional monies for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts and the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion.  While there is no con­fir­ma­tion cur­rently that this is ongo­ing fund­ing, gov­ern­ment spokes­peo­ple have indi­cated that it is the Lib­er­als’ inten­tion to renew the full fund­ing enve­lope in the fall.”

CONSERVATIVE PARTY :   “Our plat­form includes a com­mit­ment for the Audi­tor Gen­eral to con­duct an exten­sive audit of all fed­eral grant­ing pro­grams to deter­mine value for money, and we will act on her rec­om­men­da­tions.  And we will ensure that all grant­ing pro­grams are reviewed every five years on an ongo­ing basis.  The Audi­tor Gen­eral will be given the author­ity to exam­ine the af fairs of Crown Cor­po­ra­tions and government-funded Foun­da­tions.”

CCA :   “With regard to Canada Coun­cil and the CBC , your (ear­lier) com­ment was that no men­tion in the plat­form indi­cates sta­tus quo for fund­ing – can you con­firm that this would include the addi­tional monies which had been pro­vided to these par­tic­u­lar insti­tu­tions under the ‘Tomor­row Starts Today’ funding?”

CONSERVATIVE PARTY :   “As said above, under our plat­form, fund­ing in these areas would be sub­ject to the same scrutiny by the Audi­tor Gen­eral as fund­ing in any other gov­ern­ment program.”

CCA :   “In the Speech from the Throne (Feb­ru­ary 2004), the Lib­eral gov­ern­ment announced it would ‘con­tinue its lead­er­ship in the cre­ation of a new inter­na­tional instru­ment on cul­tural diver­sity’ – would a Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment also com­mit to this?”

CONSERVATIVE PARTY :   “We will review the com­mit­ments made by the present gov­ern­ment.   Our gen­eral approach will be to respect any bind­ing com­mit­ments that have been made, but we reserve the right to review those deci­sions to ensure they are in the best inter­ests of Cana­di­ans.”

CCA :   “Where does the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party stand on the issue of for­eign own­er­ship of Cana­dian broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies and Cana­dian con­tent?  The Lib­eral gov­ern­ment has been divided on this issue with the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Indus­try issu­ing a report on the side of open­ing up own­er­ship, and the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage pro­mot­ing con­tin­u­ing pro­tec­tions against for­eign own­er­ship and in sup­port of greater Cana­dian content.”

CONSERVATIVE PARTY :   “We will con­tinue to review these issues upon form­ing gov­ern­ment, tak­ing into account the reports of stand­ing com­mit­tees.   We have con­fi­dence in the abil­ity of Cana­dian artists to com­pete internationally.”

Given these responses, CCA feels obliged to bor­row a page from the Con­ser­v­a­tive party’s elec­tion cam­paign and echo their slo­gan, as we too “demand bet­ter” – of you!

GETTING ARTS AND CULTURE ON THE ELEC TION AGENDA

CCA has learned that arts and cul­ture will not be one of the top­ics dis­cussed at the tele­vised lead­ers’ debates next June 14 th (in French) and June 15 th (in Eng­lish) , even though they will be held at the National Arts Cen­tre in Ottawa.   How­ever, there are upcom­ing all-candidates’ debates focussing on cul­ture in some areas of the country:

Fred­er­ic­ton : June 15th, Fred­er­ic­ton Arts Alliance town hall meet­ing on the arts and cul­ture (fur­ther details TBA)

Toronto : Toronto Media Fes­ti­vals Net­work debate, June 16th, 8:30 pm at the Glad­stone Hotel ( 1214 Queen Street West , at Glad­stone )

Hal­i­fax : June 22nd, 7:30 pm at the Rebecca Cohn Audi­to­rium, Dal­housie Arts Cen­tre ( 6101 Uni­ver­sity Avenue )

For more infor­ma­tion of culture-based elec­tion events, see www.ccarts.ca .

CCA asks its indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional mem­bers in these regions to actively par­tic­i­pate in these debates and to be in con­tact with Kevin Des­jardins at kevin.desjardins@ccarts.ca should you know of any other meet­ings focussing on arts and cul­tural issues in the next few weeks.

Addi­tion­ally, Toronto ACTRA is appeal­ing to its mem­bers, to vot­ers, and to politi­cians to “Put arts on the agenda”.   Every­one is wel­come to attend a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, June 16 th aimed at rais­ing the pro­file of arts and cul­tural issues in the cur­rent fed­eral elec­tion. CCA echoes ACTRA’s plea for peo­ple to, “Be a lit­tle louder about the impor­tance of Cana­dian cul­ture, of pro­tect­ing it, and sup­port­ing our artists”.   The event will begin at 11:00 AM in the Bar­bara Frum Atrium of the CBC build­ing at 250 Front St. West .   Come out and join actors Sarah Pol­ley, Gary Farmer, Sonja Smits, Wendy Crew­son, Mag Ruff­man, Shirley Dou­glas, Rick Roberts and more.   Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found at www.actratoronto.com/home/artsagenda_04.htm

RENOWNED CANADIAN WRITER MARGARET ATWOOD SOUNDS OFF ON FEDERAL ELECTION

Many of you may have already read Mar­garet Atwood’s June 9th opin­ion piece in the Globe and Mail, enti­tled “The arts go march­ing one by one: Which can­di­dates are serv­ing up nour­ish­ing cul­tural poli­cies?”.   If you have yet to do so, or would like to have another read through Ms. Atwood’s sin­cere yet sar­donic prose, you can find a link to it at www.ccarts.ca in the “What’s New” sec­tion.   Other news pieces about arts and cul­tural issue are linked here as well, includ­ing a great June 10 th edi­to­r­ial by Todd Babiak pub­lished in the Edmon­ton Journal.

www.actratoronto.com/home/artsagenda_04.htm and a CBC Radio inter­view with CCA National Direc­tor Megan Davis Williams.

VOTE FOR A STRONGER CBC

Our Pub­lic Air­waves, an ini­tia­tive of con­cerned Cana­di­ans who believe in a strong pub­lic broad­cast­ing sys­tem, is alert­ing Cana­di­ans to the real pos­si­bil­ity of a weak­ened CBC.   Based on com­ments from Stephen Harper a few weeks ago (where he sug­gested com­mer­cial­iz­ing parts of CBC’s radio and tele­vi­sion net­work), and the gen­eral lack of inter­est in increased fund­ing for the orga­ni­za­tion from the Lib­eral party over the past few years, OPA is ask­ing con­cerned cit­i­zens to send an elec­tronic post­card to the major party lead­ers.   You can obtain the post­card on the cam­paign web­site at www.supportCBC.ca

TWO COUNCILS PROVIDE ARTS ADVOCACY ASSISTANCE

The Canada Coun­cil for the Arts has unveiled a new sec­tion on its web­site: the Advo­cacy Resource Kit.   This is a com­pre­hen­sive guide out­lin­ing the why and what (not the how) of arts advo­cacy, pro­vid­ing numer­ous exam­ples.   The argu­ments are made in chap­ters based on dis­ci­pli­nary sub-sectors (writ­ing and pub­lish­ing, sound record­ing, per­form­ing arts, etc.) and on sec­toral issues (new tech­nolo­gies, com­mu­ni­ties, cul­tural diver­sity, education).

The Coun­cil of Cana­di­ans, as part of their ongo­ing “The Canada We Want” cam­paign, has ini­ti­ated an elec­tion from on arts fund­ing on its web­site.   We encour­age all CCA mem­bers to take a look and ini­ti­ate or par­tic­i­pate in a dia­logue.   This is prov­ing an elec­tion like no other in recent mem­ory — never has it been so impor­tant for the voice of the arts and cul­tural sec­tor to be heard! Join in here: http://discussions.canadians.org/viewtopic.php?t=80