Off to the races! The CCA welcomes you to your 2011 general federal election!

CCA Bul­letin 12/11

March 28, 2011

 

Just the facts

On March 26, 2011, a day after a vote of no-confidence defeated the cur­rent Con­ser­v­a­tive minor­ity gov­ern­ment, the 2011 gen­eral fed­eral elec­tion was called, end­ing weeks of ris­ing polit­i­cal fer­vor and spec­u­la­tion. The Gov­er­nor Gen­eral dropped the writ this past Sat­ur­day send­ing us all to the polls on May 2nd.  In this bul­letin, you will find:

 

• What you can expect from us in the next 35 days;

• An analy­sis of the state of cul­ture related bills at the end of the 40th Par­lia­ment (with the excep­tion of bud­get bills, which will be the object of a sep­a­rate analysis).

 

 

CCA’s Elec­tion 2011 Plan

Over the next sev­eral weeks, the CCA will pro­vide you with:

 

• An analy­sis of
  

  cul­tural spending

  under Canada’s 40th Parliament;

• A com­par­i­son of the

  fed­eral par­ties’ platforms

  that have an impact on the arts, cul­ture and her­itage sector;

• A

  Doorstep Kit

  that will include ques­tions you can use and adapt when engag­ing with your local can­di­dates in order to gauge their approaches and that of their party with regards to arts and cul­ture policy;

• Weekly elec­tion e-communiqués

  will pro­vide you with media mon­i­tor­ing for arts and cul­ture as the polit­i­cal par­ties cam­paign across Canada. We will also give you a weekly update of cur­rent events in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in rela­tion to the elec­tion. Look out for these each Fri­day through­out the campaign.

• Think­ing Cul­ture debate

  : On April 20th, in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa’s Cen­tre for Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion, Cen­tre on Gov­er­nance and School of Polit­i­cal Stud­ies, the CCA is plan­ning to host a debate among local polit­i­cal can­di­dates to dis­cuss their par­ties’ plat­forms on arts, cul­ture and her­itage. In order to involve our mem­bers across Canada, we will take ques­tions via Twit­ter using hash­tag #ccartsvote and on our blog. We will also post a sum­mary cov­er­ing where the par­ties stand on the issue of culture.

 

 

What can I do?

 

If you have any inter­est­ing news arti­cles or are plan­ning events which focus on the elec­tion from the arts and cul­ture per­spec­tive, send them to communications@ccarts.ca and we will include them in our weekly com­mu­niqués. Read our blog as we update it with cur­rent cam­paign­ing events and news sto­ries and engage with us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

 

 

Tell me more

 

 

What passed and what died on the vine

The 40th Par­lia­ment was pro­rogued twice and given the real­i­ties of a minor­ity gov­ern­ment, not many major pieces of leg­is­la­tion made it to Royal Assent from a cul­tural per­spec­tive. A notable excep­tion is the procla­ma­tion of

Bill C-34

, amend­ing the Muse­ums Act to estab­lish Canada’s new National Museum of Immi­gra­tion at Pier 21 in Hal­i­fax, the sec­ond national museum out­side of the national cap­i­tal region, the first one being the Museum of Human Rights still under con­struc­tion in Winnipeg.

 

The main casu­alty at the end of the 40th Par­lia­ment is of course

Bill C-32: An Act to Amend the Copy­right Act.

In the past five years, this bill has been the first major piece of culture-related leg­is­la­tion. C-32 was first intro­duced on June 2, 2010, and debated at sec­ond read­ing on Novem­ber 2 and 3, 2010. It was referred to a leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee on Novem­ber 5 and since Decem­ber 2010, the com­mit­tee has been con­duct­ing its study by inter­view­ing wit­nesses . While C-32 con­tains urgent amend­ments that every­body agrees on, it fails to rec­og­nize the diver­sity of cul­tural mar­kets, cur­rent and poten­tial, and pro­poses a one size fits all solu­tion her­alded by some and vig­or­ously opposed by oth­ers. This has led the CCA to rec­om­mend that leg­is­la­tors go ahead with the amend­ments that suit one type of busi­ness model, but then go back to the draft­ing board for the other sub-sectors of the cul­tural econ­omy which oper­ate under totally dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances. It is true that at the start of a new Par­lia­ment, and con­di­tional upon unan­i­mous agree­ment of the House, a gov­ern­ment pub­lic bill may be rein­stated at the stage reached at the time of the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment. This means that the­o­ret­i­cally, we could see the work of the leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee that was inter­rupted last week resume once again some time after the elec­tion. This how­ever is an unlikely sce­nario regard­less of the election’s out­come, if only because of the posi­tion adopted by the Bloc Québé­cois regard­ing this piece of legislation.

 

 

Pri­vate mem­bers’ bills

 

Pri­vate mem­bers’ bills, like all incom­plete Cham­ber activ­ity in both Houses, cease with the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment. Dis­so­lu­tion ends all busi­ness in the Sen­ate and the House of Com­mons, and is fol­lowed by a gen­eral elec­tion. This dif­fers from the process fol­low­ing a pro­ro­ga­tion, where pri­vate mem­bers’ bills are rein­stated at the same stage they were at before the pro­ro­ga­tion was called. It is worth point­ing out that pri­vate mem­bers’ bills rarely make it to Royal Assent, although

Bill C-442

did and

Bill C-470

likely would have as well.

 

• C-442

  - Mr. Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park) -

  An Act to estab­lish a National Holo­caust Monument

  . Ini­tially intro­duced in May 2008 and rein­tro­duced three times since, this bill was read for the third time in the Sen­ate on March 24, 2011, and received Royal Assent the next day.

  The new law requires the Min­is­ter respon­si­ble for the National Cap­i­tal Act to estab­lish and work in coop­er­a­tion with a National Holo­caust Mon­u­ment Devel­op­ment Coun­cil to design and build a National Holo­caust Mon­u­ment to be located in the national cap­i­tal region.