The Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing that the annual bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts be increased to $300 mil­lion. Fur­ther­more, the Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing for the cre­ation of a fund for cre­ators work­ing in new media production.

The Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing for a $50 mil­lion fund­ing increase to the Canada Fea­ture Film Fund, with $20 mil­lion des­ig­nated to the Que­bec film indus­try.

The Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing for the estab­lish­ment of a fund for doc­u­men­tary fea­ture films and Imax movies. It is also impor­tant that the amount of money allo­cated to the Que­bec film indus­try is a reflec­tion of Quebec’s level of cul­tural consumption.

Until Que­bec gains full con­trol of its own cul­ture, the Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to intro­duce a new museum pol­icy in line with the cur­rent needs of muse­ums in Que­bec and Canada. Fur­ther­more, in 1982, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment promised that the Cana­dian Museum of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy would be per­ma­nently relo­cated to Gatineau. The Bloc Québé­cois will pres­sure the gov­ern­ment until this promise is met.

The Bloc Québé­cois pro­poses the estab­lish­ment of an incen­tives pro­gram to pro­mote the dis­sem­i­na­tion and recog­ni­tion of regional cul­tural works and emerg­ing tal­ent. The Bloc Québé­cois believes that these mea­sures must grant local artists access to a min­i­mum of 10% of media space devoted to cul­ture.

The Bloc Québé­cois will pro­mote and pre­serve the archi­tec­tural, reli­gious and his­toric her­itage sites in Que­bec which have been iden­ti­fied by the Gov­ern­ment of Que­bec.

• estab­lished two new national muse­ums, the Cana­dian Museum of Immi­gra­tion at Pier 21, in Hal­i­fax, and the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights, in Winnipeg;
• increased sup­port for the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts by 20 per­cent, to its high­est level in history;
• cre­ated the Canada Media Fund to sup­port Cana­dian tele­vi­sion, film, and dig­i­tal media content;
• pro­vided sta­ble fund­ing, at record lev­els, for the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Music Fund, and the Canada Peri­od­i­cal Fund;
• invested in cul­tural infra­struc­ture across the coun­try, includ­ing the Royal BC Museum, in Vic­to­ria; the Quartier de Spec­ta­cles, home of the Mon­treal Jazz Fes­ti­val, and the Con­fed­er­a­tion Cen­tre for the Arts, in Charlottetown

• Increase fund­ing to all of Canada’s arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, Tele­film Canada, orches­tras, the­atres and pub­lish­ers. The goal will be to make increases in this sec­tor com­men­su­rate with increases in sup­port over the years for other sec­tors such as trans­port, energy and health care.
• Restore and improve arm’s length prin­ci­ples in the gov­er­nance of arts and cul­tural insti­tu­tions and agen­cies under fed­eral juris­dic­tion. In keep­ing with such a posi­tion, we believe that the heads of Canada’s cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions such as the CRTC, Canada Coun­cil, CBC and Tele­film Canada should not be appointed by the polit­i­cal party in power but by an arm’s length com­mit­tee made up of com­pe­tent peo­ple rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the var­i­ous diverse stake­hold­ers in Cana­dian society.
• Restore the government-provided trans­port ser­vice (elim­i­nated by the Harper gov­ern­ment) to allow the trans­port of exhi­bi­tions between muse­ums and galleries.
• Seek greater sup­port and ade­quate resources for arts grants programs.
• Seek increased fund­ing incen­tives for artists and art events to tour Canada’s rural regions.
• Increase sup­port for com­mu­nity arts pro­grams and facil­i­ties across Canada by estab­lish­ing sta­ble base fund­ing at a set per­cent­age of the fed­eral budget.
• Equal­ize fed­eral fund­ing for arts and cul­ture among provinces, ter­ri­to­ries and munic­i­pal­i­ties to make it con­sis­tent with the provinces and munic­i­pal­i­ties that have the high­est cur­rent standards.
• Pro­vide incen­tives to all provinces and ter­ri­to­ries to restore and improve arts and cul­ture com­po­nents in schools and extra-curricular activ­i­ties not only in urban but also in rural areas.

We will estab­lish the equiv­a­lent of the Japan­ese National Trea­sure Pro­gram where out­stand­ing indi­vid­ual artists are sup­ported to per­fect their crafts.

We will imple­ment a match­ing grant for Cana­dian muse­ums, his­toric build­ings and her­itage lighthouses.

We will pro­vide sus­tained fund­ing for the Canada Media Fund and Tele­film Canada, enhance fed­eral film incen­tives and develop a tar­geted strat­egy for the pro­mo­tion of domes­tic films in Canada.

The Bloc Québé­cois will intro­duce a bill that rec­og­nizes Quebec’s national film industry.

Party

• Ensure that the Cana­dian Radio-television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (CRTC) reserves more band­width for inde­pen­dent and non-profit stations.
• Enact leg­is­la­tion that requires cin­e­mas and video chains to have at least 20% Cana­dian content.

We will re-focus the man­date of the CRTC to pro­mote and pro­tect Cana­dian cul­tural industries.

We will reform the CRTC and also ensure it bet­ter reflects  Quebec’s cul­tural and lin­guis­tic real­ity and that of the fran­coph­one community.

We will set license require­ments for broad­cast­ers based on clear, bind­ing and enforced per­for­mance stan­dards for broad­cast­ers, includ­ing increased Cana­dian drama.

We will pro­mote the pro­duc­tion and broad­cast of Cana­dian con­tent on Cana­dian tele­vi­sion and in Cana­dian theatre.

We will develop a dig­i­tal on-line cul­ture ser­vice to broaden access to Cana­dian con­tent.

The Strat­egy is designed to build on Canada’s advan­tages in the global econ­omy by encour­ag­ing private-sector invest­ment in research and devel­op­ment and enrol­ment in uni­ver­sity sci­ence and engi­neer­ing pro­grams – with the goal of cre­at­ing good new jobs and a higher qual­ity of life for Canadians.

In 2010 we con­sulted experts and busi­ness­peo­ple on posi­tion­ing Canada to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented by new infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies. Our pur­pose is to build on our actions so far in this area. For example:

• our plan to extend broad­band cov­er­age to 200,000 addi­tional house­holds in rural and remote regions; and
• our suc­cess­ful efforts to increase com­pe­ti­tion and choice and to lower costs for wire­less consumers.

Later this spring, a re-elected Stephen Harper Gov­ern­ment will

announce and begin imple­ment­ing a Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Strategy

, focused on five priorities:

• build­ing world-class dig­i­tal infrastructure;
• encour­ag­ing busi­nesses to adopt dig­i­tal technologies;
• sup­port­ing dig­i­tal skills development;
• fos­ter­ing the growth of Cana­dian com­pa­nies sup­ply­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to global mar­kets; and
• cre­at­ing made-in-Canada con­tent across all plat­forms, to bring Canada to the world.

To achieve these goals, among other spe­cific actions we will:

• sup­port col­lab­o­ra­tive projects between col­leges and small– and medium-sized busi­nesses
  

  to accel­er­ate the adop­tion of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions technologies

  ;

• 
  

  pro­mote enrol­ment in post-secondary sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing and mathematics

  pro­grams; and

• 
  

  build Canada’s dig­i­tal content

  through addi­tional sup­port for the Canada Media Fund.

We will expect the major inter­net car­ri­ers to con­tribute finan­cially to this goal.

We will rescind the 2006 Con­ser­v­a­tive industry-oriented direc­tive to the CRTC and direct the reg­u­la­tor to stand up for the pub­lic inter­est, not just the major telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions companies.

We will enshrine “net neu­tral­ity” in law, end price goug­ing and “net throt­tling,” with clear rules for Inter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs), enforced by the CRTC.

We will pro­hibit all forms of usage-based billing (UBB) by Inter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs).

• Pro­tect Canada’s cul­tural iden­tity dur­ing trade negotiations.

We will reverse the fund­ing cuts of the Harper gov­ern­ment for the exchange of artists and the per­for­mance of Cana­dian arts abroad, as they are a vital aspect of effec­tive diplo­macy and artis­tic expres­sion.

The Bloc Québé­cois is com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a sys­tem that requires ISPs to pay roy­al­ties to a fund that will be used to com­pen­sate cre­ators in Que­bec who have faced the adverse effects of ille­gal down­load­ing of artis­tic products.

The Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to intro­duce a tax exemp­tion on copy­right and pub­lic lend­ing rights, and is also ask­ing for enhanced pub­lic lend­ing rights.

• Pro­tect the copy­right for artists so it is not sur­ren­dered to muse­ums and gal­leries in the process of per­mit­ting exhibits.
• Pro­vide pro­tec­tion for indige­nous intel­lec­tual and artis­tic prop­erty rights.

• Fol­low and imple­ment rec­om­men­da­tions of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts in order to enable artists to access var­i­ous social pro­grams includ­ing Employ­ment Insur­ance, Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion and the Canada Pen­sion Plan.
• Change the Canada Rev­enue Act to allow arts and cul­ture work­ers to ben­e­fit from a tax aver­ag­ing plan that will take into account the fact that lean years often pre­cede and fol­low a good year when a show is pro­duced, a book is pub­lished, or a grant or a prize is won.

• Extend income tax relief and incen­tives to artists.

The Bloc Québé­cois is ask­ing that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment abol­ish the GST on books, what­ever the medium used.

All of them find a great oppor­tu­nity to make friends and to develop their cre­ativ­ity. But the fees and other costs involved can be beyond the reach of some families.

To help fam­i­lies in pro­vid­ing these impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties for their chil­dren, we will estab­lish a Children’s Arts Tax Credit, to cover up to $500 per child in qual­i­fy­ing expenses for eli­gi­ble arts or cul­tural activities.

Resource taxes such as car­bon taxes are refunded to tax­pay­ers by reduc­ing income tax. Those with low income who do not pay income tax will be com­pen­sated through a for­mula and mech­a­nism sim­i­lar to the way the Goods and Ser­vices Tax is refunded by quar­terly payments.