PRE-ELECTION REPORT CARD

Ottawa , May 14th 2004 — Although the date has yet to be fixed, it seems fairly cer­tain that Cana­di­ans will go to the polls in late spring.   The fol­low­ing is a brief sum­mary of fed­eral par­ties’ posi­tions on cul­ture at the present time.

Once the writ is dropped, CCA will con­tact all par­ties for their cul­tural plat­forms and for their posi­tions on spe­cific issues, giv­ing them a chance to improve their grades .   In the mean­time, CCA has elec­tion and advo­cacy pre­pared­ness mate­ri­als up on the web­site ( www.ccarts.ca ), in Eng­lish and in French, to help make the case for the arts.

Lib­er­als ( www.liberal.ca )                                           Grade : A–

The Lib­er­als have made cred­i­ble progress in the area of arts and cul­ture, due in part to a vision­ary Min­is­ter with stay­ing power. How­ever, af ter more than 10 years in gov­ern­ment, one might have expected more progress in the area of sup­port to the cul­tural sec­tor.   Par­tic­u­larly dis­ap­point­ing is the lack of will to con­struct a fed­eral cul­tural pol­icy framework.

On the plus side, points in their favour include

• the $560 mil­lion fund­ing announce­ment made in May 2001 which included new pro­grammes to address much needed deficits in the sec­tor (such as capac­ity build­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity), renewed for a fur­ther year (fis­cal 2004-05);
• the DCH moved quickly in the wake of the spon­sor­ship scan­dal to pro­vide par­tial assis­tance to many cul­tural fes­ti­vals and events which had expected to receive fund­ing before that pro­gramme was scrapped;
• sup­port in the Speech from the Throne for an ini­tia­tive of the pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter, Sheila Copps, for an inter­na­tional instru­ment to exclude cul­ture from trade treaties means that Canada will con­tinue to play a strong role in this strug­gle to pre­serve cul­tural diversity.

Neg­a­tive impacts include

• w af fling on the issue of for­eign own­er­ship, with Indus­try Canada com­ing down on the side of dereg­u­la­tion of own­er­ship restric­tions for Cana­dian broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies, and Cana­dian Her­itage sup­port­ing the main­te­nance of exist­ing lim­its on for­eign invest­ment.   Both sides have talked about meet­ing to resolve dif­fer­ences and to come to a “com­pro­mise” position;
• the Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Canada pro­gramme which was unable to meet the needs of appli­cants this year due to a decrease in the monies avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion and an increase in the num­ber of appli­ca­tions.   Many of these same groups had been caught in the abo­li­tion of the spon­sor­ship programme.
• work to improve the finan­cial via­bil­ity of self employed artists has been incon­sis­tent — the Lib­er­als voted against a motion to exempt copy­right income from tax­a­tion, and have failed to estab­lish the Coun­cil on Sta­tus of the Artist required in the leg­is­la­tion of the same name.

In an inter­view on CPAC’s Talk Pol­i­tics last week, fresh­man Her­itage Min­is­ter Hélène Chal­i­four Scher­rer reit­er­ated her com­mit­ment to ongo­ing sus­tain­able fund­ing, cor­rectly iden­ti­fy­ing it as the major issue in the sec­tor.   She stated she was “work­ing on the Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing to make sure it can be sus­tain­able; it would be for three years at least to make sure … orga­ni­za­tions can plan”.   This is good news.

Com­ments : real progress in the area of secur­ing fund­ing, but pol­icy devel­op­ment and the reg­u­la­tory frame­work still need work.

Con­ser­v­a­tives ( www.conservative.ca )                      Grade: C–

There is no sign of sup­port for the arts in any of the mate­ri­als to date, although there is a men­tion of her­itage in its “Par­tial Pol­icy State­ment”, dated 4 Feb­ru­ary 2004 .   This doc­u­ment also calls for “an over­all review of the rel­e­vance” of the CRTC.

Com­ments : Con­tin­ues to demon­strate a poor grasp of the topic.   Needs improvement.

Bloc Québé­cois ( www.blocquebecois.org )             Grade: B

The Province of Que­bec has long been a leader in cul­tural af fairs and this party has brought many of these pro­gres­sive ini­tia­tives to the fed­eral level.   The party was aggres­sive on the issue of enforc­ing for­eign own­er­ship restric­tions and sup­port­ive of a cul­tural instru­ment to counter trade lib­er­al­iza­tion.   Bloc MPs sup­ported pri­vate mem­bers’ bills on an income tax exemp­tion for copy­right income for artists and cre­ators, based on the Que­bec model; how­ever, the BQ voted with the gov­ern­ment on C-12, rather than in sup­port of preser­va­tion of the artis­tic merit defence.

Com­ments : gen­er­ally demon­strates a keen under­stand­ing of the topic; how­ever, it is lim­ited by its nar­row mandate.

New Demo­c­ra­tic Party ( www.ndp.ca )                     Grade: B+

Con­sid­er­able sup­port on this party’s web­site for cul­ture: in par­tic­u­lar, sup­port for pub­lic broad­cast­ing and the CBC, pre­serv­ing our cul­tural iden­tity, and the threats inher­ent in con­cen­tra­tion of media own­er­ship.   NDP MP’s have man­aged to intro­duce pri­vate mem­bers’ bills relat­ing to income tax exemp­tions for copy­right income for artists and cre­ators on two sep­a­rate occa­sions; party mem­bers were also vocal in their sup­port of amend­ments to Bill C-12 and free­dom of expres­sion.   The party pro­vides much needed bal­ance in the House on issues of cul­ture, and plays a strong role on House committees.

Com­ments : no lead­er­ship role to date, but has an excel­lent grasp of the topic and effects change from the side­lines. Must strive to real­ize its obvi­ous potential.

Green Party ( www.greenparty.ca )                            Grade: B

This party’s cul­tural plat­form is sup­port­ive of the arts (increased fund­ing) and her­itage (preser­va­tion and ren­o­va­tion of his­toric build­ings).   It is look­ing for a “trickle down and trickle up” approach — more fund­ing to the Canada Coun­cil and to com­mu­nity arts groups.

Com­ments : recent high school polls indi­cate that young vot­ers find their poli­cies very attrac­tive.   Poten­tial for growth.