ONE WEEK TO GO IN THE 2006 FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN… ADVOCACY UPDATE FROM THE CCA

CCA Bulletin3/06

Jan­u­ary 17, 2006

Only seven days remain before Cana­di­ans go to the polls in the first fed­eral win­ter elec­tion in a num­ber of years.  The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) con­tin­ues to work steadily to pro­vide our mem­bers, stake­hold­ers and sup­port­ers with as much use­ful infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble with respect to the fed­eral par­ties’ posi­tions on arts and cul­ture issues.  Since our last bul­letin 02/06 sent Jan­u­ary 9 2006, the fol­low­ing par­ties have released their offi­cial platforms:

The Lib­eral Party of Canada:

http://www.liberal.ca/images/dir/PDFs/platform_e.pdf (Ref­er­ences to arts and cul­ture can be found on page 63, in the sec­tion “Build­ing the Canada We Want”)

The Con­ser­v­a­tive Party of Canada:

http://www.conservative.ca/media/20060113-Platform.pdf (Ref­er­ences to arts and cul­ture can be found on page 39, in the sec­tion “Stand Up For Our Communities”)

The New Demo­c­ra­tic Party of Canada (NDP):

http://www.ndp.ca/ndp-drupal/files/platform-en-final-web.pdf (Ref­er­ences to arts and cul­ture can be found on page 32, in the sec­tion “Get­ting More Done for People:Jobs”.  Addi­tion­ally, on Jan­u­ary 12 the NDP issued an announce­ment specif­i­cally about its cul­tural plat­form avail­able here:  http://www.ndp.ca/page/3053)

As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, le Bloc Québe­cois’ elec­tion plat­form as it per­tains to arts and cul­ture appears on pages 55 through 59 at http://www.bloc.org/archivage/plateforme_2005-2006.pdf, which is avail­able in French only.  The Green Party have a sec­tion of their 2006 Elec­tion plat­form entitled“Sharing our Sto­ries: Arts, Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion”, which can be viewed at http://www.greenparty.ca/our_stories.html.

In addi­tion to the par­ties’ offi­cial plat­forms, the CCA has received responses to our Decem­ber 20election ques­tion­naire from all of the major polit­i­cal par­ties, with the excep­tion of the Green Party.Party responses are avail­able in the elec­tions sec­tion of our web­site at:http://www.ccarts.ca/en/2005ElectionNews1/partyresponse.htm

The CCA will pro­vide analy­ses of all five par­ties’ plat­forms per­tain­ing to arts and cul­ture issues in the com­ing days.  Please con­tinue to visit http://www.ccarts.ca/en/2005ElectionNews1.htm for ongo­ing CCA elec­tion updates.

MESSAGE FROM THE CANADIAN ARTS COALITION

With two weeks left in the fed­eral elec­tion cam­paign, the arts com­mu­nity needs as many voices as pos­si­ble to tell can­di­dates about the impor­tance of mak­ing the com­mit­ment to increase fund­ing to the arts by $5 per Cana­dian a real­ity under a new government.

Please go to www.votearts2006.ca or www.votezpourlesarts2006.ca and find the “email can­di­dates –act now” flash­ing prompt under the “Sup­port Vote Arts 2006″ sec­tion on the home page.  There is tem­plate let­ter on the site or you can draft your own and send it directly to all of the can­di­dates in your rid­ing.  The site has soft­ware to enable vis­i­tors to con­tact can­di­dates imme­di­ately, which only takes a few min­utes to do.

The Cana­dian Arts Coali­tion needs your help in mak­ing sure all par­ties under­stand the impor­tance of the arts in the lives of Cana­di­ans and that increased fed­eral invest­ment through the Canada Coun­cil For the Arts is a priority.

NEW ARTS AND CULTURE CAMPAIGNS ACTIVE IN THE 2006 FEDERAL ELECTION (alpha­bet­i­cal order)

http://www.ccarts.ca/en/ElectionLinks.htm

ACTRA: “Vote for Our Cul­tural Future” www.actra.ca/election

At a Jan­u­ary 11 press con­fer­ence in Toronto, Cana­dian film and tele­vi­sion stars called on fed­eral politi­cians to let Cana­di­ans know where they stand on Canada’s cul­tural future.  Among the mem­bers of ACTRA tak­ing part were Wendy Crew­son, Richard Hardacre, Dan Lett, Miriam McDon­ald, Colin Mochrie, Cara Pifko, Karl Pruner, Fiona Reid, Wayne Rob­son, Sonja Smits, Julie Stew­art, and R.H. Thom­son.  ACTRA is deter­mined to raise the alarm dur­ing this fed­eral elec­tion about the threat to Canada’s cul­tural sov­er­eignty.  For more information:http://www.actra.ca/actra/control/press_news1?id=10407

ACTRA encour­ages peo­ple to send let­ters to local can­di­dates via www.actra.ca/election in order to get them to make a com­mit­ment to three key cul­tural issues.

Cana­dian Actors’ Equity Asso­ci­a­tion — “Elec­tion Alert 2006 “http://www.caea.com/EquityWeb/NewsAndEvents/News/ElectionRelease2006.pdf

Cana­dian Actors’ Equity Asso­ci­a­tion is the pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion of per­form­ers, directors,choreographers, fight direc­tors and stage man­agers in Eng­lish Canada who are engaged in live per­for­mance in the­atre, opera and dance.  Rec­og­niz­ing that the arts are vital to life and artists make an invalu­able con­tri­bu­tion to our soci­ety, Equity sup­ports the cre­ative efforts of its mem­bers by seek­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions and opportunities.

Since ‘Act II’ of the 2006 elec­tion is now well under­way, Equity is ask­ing its mem­bers to raise two key cul­tural ques­tions with local can­di­dates in this campaign:

- Do you and your party sup­port the new fed­eral fund­ing for arts and cul­ture announced on Novem­ber 23, which included an increase to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts of $306million over the next three years?

- How will you and your party keep this promised fund­ing if you are elected on Jan­u­ary 23rd, 2006?

For more information:http://www.caea.com/EquityWeb/NewsAndEvents/News/ElectionRelease2006.pdf

Fédéra­tion cul­turelle canadienne-française (FCCF) — “The role and impor­tance of arts and cul­ture in the devel­op­ment and iden­tity of Fran­coph­one and Aca­dian communities“http://www.fccf.ca/

The Fédéra­tion cul­turelle canadienne-française (FCCF) is a national orga­ni­za­tion with a man­date topro­mote the artis­tic and cul­tural expres­sion of Fran­coph­one and Aca­dian com­mu­ni­ties. Its mem­bers –11 provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions and 7 national arts orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing the­atre, the visual arts, song/music, pub­lish­ing and the media arts — have over the past 30 years united in their efforts to ensure that arts and cul­ture nour­ish the soul and strengthen the cul­tural iden­tity of Fran­coph­one and Aca­dian minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties through­out Canada.

The FCCF and its mem­bers would like to know party posi­tions and receive an update on the com­mit­ment that par­ties are pre­pared to make and to keep to sup­port the devel­op­ment of Canada’s Fran­coph­one and Aca­dian com­mu­ni­ties through the arts and culture.

Friends of Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing — “End Patron­age at CBC” http://www.friends.ca/end-cbc-patronage

Friends of Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing is an inde­pen­dent, Canada-wide, non-partisan vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tion sup­ported by 66,000 house­holds.  Its mis­sion is to defend and enhance the qual­ity and quan­tity of Cana­dian pro­gram­ming in the Cana­dian audio-visual sys­tem.  The lat­est in a series of Friends of Cana­dian Broadcasting’s internet-based elec­tion cam­paigns focuses on gov­er­nance issues at the CBC.CCA mem­bers and sup­port­ers are encour­aged to visit the Friends web action cen­tre at http://www.friends.ca/end-cbc-patronageand join with thou­sands of other Cana­di­ans to send pow­er­ful mes­sage to can­di­dates of all polit­i­cal par­ties urg­ing them to end par­ti­san appoint­ments to the CBC Board and Presidency.

Should you or your orga­ni­za­tion know of any cur­rent advo­cacy efforts not men­tioned in this bul­letin or on our web­site, includ­ing (but not lim­ited to): ques­tion­naires sent to and responses received from the polit­i­cal par­ties; all-candidates debates that dis­cussed arts and cul­ture issues;and per­ti­nent state­ments by can­di­dates and/or party lead­ers, please keep us informed so that we can echo them info@ccarts.ca.