Federal Election 2011: What to ask your local candidates (Part 2)

CCA Bul­letin 14/11

April 6, 2011

 

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts’ main man­date — one that has been finan­cially sup­ported by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for over 40 years — is to con­tribute to an informed pub­lic debate on cul­tural issues. In keep­ing with this man­date and in order to assist Cana­di­ans inter­ested in learn­ing about how arts and cul­ture are being dis­cussed dur­ing the 2011 elec­toral cam­paign, the CCA has iden­ti­fied six broad areas of impor­tance for artists, cre­ators, cul­tural insti­tu­tions and indus­tries. The CCA has devel­oped a set of ques­tions per­tain­ing to each issue. These ques­tions can be pre­sented to can­di­dates when they come knock­ing at your door or dur­ing larger debates.

The sec­ond part of our 2011 Fed­eral Elec­tion Doorstep Kit includes ques­tions that touch on three impor­tant issues affect­ing the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in Canada. The top­ics raised include:

1)

the issue of mod­ern­iz­ing copy­right legislation;

2) telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, new media and broadcasting

; and

3)

Canada’s her­itage institutions

. Each set of sug­gested ques­tions is pre­ceded by a short back­ground sum­mary on the issue. We encour­age you to dis­sem­i­nate the responses you receive, either in writ­ing or in a pub­lic forum.

These ques­tions have also been sent to the lead­ers of each polit­i­cal party. As is made clear in the CCA’s Fed­eral Elec­tion Rules of Engage­ment, the CCA will present an analy­sis of the posi­tions of each fed­eral party as they affect the inter­ests of Cana­di­ans with regards to arts, cul­ture and her­itage. The CCA will not endorse any can­di­date or polit­i­cal party. The deci­sion to cast a bal­lot is the right and duty of every Cana­dian cit­i­zen, who can form their judg­ments on an indi­vid­ual basis.

Issue: Mod­ern­iz­ing the Copy­right Act

Back­ground

In June 2010, the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment intro­duced Bill C-32: the Copy­right Mod­ern­iza­tion Act. After pass­ing its sec­ond read­ing in the House of Com­mons in Novem­ber 2010, the bill was sent to study by an ad hoc leg­isla­tive committee.

The CCA acknowl­edges the urgent need to mod­ern­ize Canada’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty law so that the coun­try is in line with its inter­na­tional oblig­a­tions under the World Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Orga­ni­za­tion, and so that Cana­dian cre­ators are able to pro­tect their work in the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment. Such leg­is­la­tion is the cor­ner­stone of the cre­ative econ­omy in a dig­i­tal uni­verse. Yet, while C-32 suited the needs of sev­eral play­ers, its numer­ous and often vague excep­tions were seen by most artists and cre­ators as an expro­pri­a­tion of their rights with­out com­pen­sa­tion. Con­versely, those who stood to ben­e­fit from those same excep­tions were frus­trated by the fact that the excep­tions were only applic­a­ble if their works were not pro­tected by dig­i­tal locks.

In Feb­ru­ary 2011, 97 arts and arts ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions from across the coun­try signed a joint state­ment expos­ing the appar­ent prob­lems in Bill C-32. The joint state­ment brings together an unprece­dented coali­tion of orga­ni­za­tions from the arts and cul­ture indus­tries rep­re­sent­ing writ­ers, per­form­ers, actors, illus­tra­tors, musi­cians, com­posers, pub­lish­ers, poets, play­wrights, pro­duc­ers and song­writ­ers, all urg­ing Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to make changes to Bill C-32. This coali­tion is a cru­cial part of a $46 bil­lion indus­try that employs more than 630,000 Cana­di­ans and that, as often stated by Her­itage Min­is­ter James Moore, con­tributes twice as much to the GDP as the forestry indus­try.

Sug­gested ques­tions:

• Pre­cisely when will your party intro­duce revi­sions to the Copy­right Act in the next Parliament?

• What types of amend­ments do you intend to put forward?

• Does your party sup­port col­lec­tive man­age­ment of copy­right as an effi­cient way to ensure pub­lic access to works and fair com­pen­sa­tion to cre­ators and other rights own­ers? Please explain why.

• Which ele­ments of Bill C-32 would your party keep, and which ele­ments of the bill would your party remove or change in a new bill to mod­ern­ize the Copy­right Act?

Issue: Broad­cast­ing, New Media and Telecommunications

Back­ground

The CCA has long been inter­ested in broad­cast­ing for three main rea­sons: the indus­try pro­vides a large num­ber of cul­tural jobs and sup­port to other cul­tural fields of activ­ity; within the Broad­cast­ing Act, one can find the most artic­u­late expres­sion of cul­tural pol­icy ever adopted by Par­lia­ment; and finally, audio­vi­sual prod­ucts con­sti­tute the form of cul­tural prod­ucts most widely con­sumed by Canadians.

The CCA has always sup­ported leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­tory mea­sures to ensure the own­er­ship and effec­tive con­trol of Cana­dian cul­tural indus­tries and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions by Cana­di­ans. The first rea­son why is because Cana­dian own­ers have been deemed more likely to tell Cana­dian sto­ries.  The sec­ond rea­son ties in to the assump­tion that it is eas­ier to reg­u­late Cana­dian com­pa­nies as opposed to for­eign ones. This long-standing Cana­dian cul­tural pol­icy was weak­ened in 2009 when the gov­ern­ment over­turned the CRTC’s rul­ing in the Glob­alive case. In Feb­ru­ary 2011, the Fed­eral Court ruled that the gov­ern­ment breached the law, send­ing the case over to the Fed­eral Court of Appeal.

For sev­eral years, the CCA has urged the CRTC to ensure that own­ers of new dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms (inter­net and wire­less) pro­vide the same finan­cial sup­port to the pro­duc­tion of Cana­dian pro­gram­ming as do own­ers of over-the-air, cable and satel­lite dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices. Given the increased con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing over the past few years, this demand seems even more log­i­cal.

Sug­gested ques­tions:

• Does your party intend to main­tain the long-standing pol­icy con­cern­ing own­er­ship and effec­tive con­trol of Cana­dian cul­tural indus­tries? Does that include telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and if not, why?

• Will your party sup­port a pol­icy to make inter­net and wire­less ser­vice providers con­tribute finan­cially to the devel­op­ment of Cana­dian con­tent for all dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms, like other dis­tri­b­u­tion undertakings?

• Given your party’s sup­port for the her­itage committee’s rec­om­men­da­tion that the annual per capita sub­sidy to the CBC be raised to $40 within the frame­work of a long-term agree­ment, when do you plan to imple­ment this rec­om­men­da­tion and over what time frame?

Issue: Cana­dian Her­itage Institutions

Back­ground

We are cur­rently under­way with our third fed­eral elec­tion in five years. Yet, no progress has been made with regards to a new fed­eral museum pol­icy, which was the sub­ject of an all-party agree­ment in 2005. How­ever, the her­itage com­mu­nity has gar­nered some atten­tion. While the gov­ern­ment has injected impor­tant sums of money in to the main­te­nance of a num­ber of national prop­er­ties (Cana­dian Museum of Nature, National Arts Cen­tre, Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion, etc.), there were some sig­nif­i­cant cuts to the museum com­mu­nity (the Muse­ums Assis­tance Pro­gram lost $4.6 mil­lion and the Exhi­bi­tion Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice was ter­mi­nated). On the other hand, some top up pay­ments to national muse­ums were doled out last year as part of Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan. The gov­ern­ment endorsed the cre­ation of the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights in Win­nipeg and gave Pier 21 in Hal­i­fax national museum sta­tus. These are the first two national muse­ums out­side the national cap­i­tal region. The Por­trait Gallery of Canada was put on per­ma­nent hold and down­graded to a pro­gram com­po­nent of Library and Archives Canada, while the Cana­dian Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy lost its home and has been relo­cated to a small space within the National Gallery of Canada.

Sug­gested ques­tion:

• Given your party’s sup­port of the 2005 national museum pol­icy con­sen­sus, which poli­cies and pro­grams are you now propos­ing for muse­ums and other her­itage institutions?