QUESTIONS OF CULTURE

Ottawa , June 14, 2004 – Now that all the par­ties have issued their offi­cial plat­forms, and given the horse race that is unfold­ing, there is a pal­pa­ble feel­ing of fore­bod­ing among Cana­di­ans who sup­port the arts.   Hav­ing learned that there are no ques­tions on the arts, cul­ture or her­itage in the lead­ers’ debate, CCA has set out some ques­tions of its own.

Three sets of ques­tions for the Liberals

• Why not stand proudly on the rea­son­able track record of sup­port, and the cul­tural poli­cies you have put in place, over the past sev­eral years?   Sup­port for the arts is widely rec­og­nized as mak­ing sound eco­nomic sense and con­tribut­ing to the growth and cohe­sion of com­mu­ni­ties, so why not trum­pet what you’ve achieved?   Com­mu­ni­cat­ing directly with Lib­eral party offi­cials, CCA has learned it is their inten­tion to, at a min­i­mum, main­tain all fund­ing now in place.   Were the Prime Min­is­ter to speak clearly of his com­mit­ment to the arts, her­itage and cul­tural indus­tries, wouldn’t his posi­tion in the run-up to the elec­tion improve?

• Although there is men­tion of the Liberal’s sup­port for the Cul­tural Diver­sity treaty being devel­oped by UNESCO, it fails to men­tion whether they will be uphold­ing restric­tions on for­eign own­er­ship of the broad­cast­ing indus­try, cur­rently threat­ened by a report from the Indus­try Com­mit­tee. When Ipsos-Reid is report­ing that 85% of Cana­di­ans favour main­tain­ing own­er­ship and con­trol of our broad­cast indus­tries, why have the Lib­er­als gone silent instead of artic­u­lat­ing their sup­port for this sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic pol­icy measure?

• In response to a well-reasoned push on the part of the major arts orga­ni­za­tions (Shaw, Strat­ford , the Cana­dian Opera Com­pany, etc) the Lib­eral plat­form pro­poses addi­tional, and badly-needed, funds that would flow through the Canada Coun­cil. Why not also address the more fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of chronic under fund­ing for the Canada Coun­cil by increas­ing its bud­get from$153 mil­lion to $300 million?

Con­ser­v­a­tively Questioning

A spokesper­son for the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party stated that “no men­tion in the plat­form indi­cates sta­tus quo for a first Con­ser­v­a­tive mandate”.

• Since the arts was not men­tioned, is it s af e to assume sta­tus quo when there is a plan to review all gov­ern­ment fund­ing programs?

• There is no men­tion of the Con­ser­v­a­tives’ inten­tion to sup­port Cana­dian own­er­ship of broad­cast­ing, but there is men­tion of review­ing the rel­e­vance of the CRTC. In fact the party can­di­dates’ hand­book sup­ports restruc­tur­ing and reduc­ing the CRTC.   The result of such an exer­cise would cer­tainly adversely af fect the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of Cana­dian con­tent.   Do the Con­ser­v­a­tives have any inter­est in sup­port­ing Cancon?

• On one point the plat­form was extremely explicit, that the artis­tic merit defence would be com­pletely removed from Bill C-12 (Act to amend the Crim­i­nal Code for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and other vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and the Canada Evi­dence Act).   How can the Con­ser­v­a­tives expect us to make sense of a plat­form that sup­ports more free­dom for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to speak   while threat­en­ing to remove the hard won rights of artists under the same Char­ter of Rights and Freedoms?

On Fri­day June 11 CCA issued a bul­letin quot­ing fur­ther state­ments from the Con­ser­v­a­tives (28/04: CCA Gets to Know its Neigh­bours, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party of Canada) in response to spe­cific questions.

NDP: Does “No one left behind” include artists?

In ques­tion­ing the NDP one won­ders why there is not more detail in the plat­form of a party that has been so sup­port­ive of the arts in the past.   The NDP con­tin­ues to show sup­port — for exam­ple, it stood alone with the Bloc at a gath­er­ing of arts and media labour groups that met on Par­lia­ment Hill last win­ter to defend Cana­dian own­er­ship of the broad­cast indus­try under the slo­gan Our Canada is Not for Sale .   How­ever, ques­tions remain.

• Hav­ing sup­ported tax mea­sures to ensure that artists and other work­ers can earn a respectable liv­ing, why did the plat­form shy away from build­ing on an NDP pri­vate mem­bers’ motion to exempt artists from pay­ing tax on a per­cent­age of their copy­right and artis­tic income?

• The NDP has worked hard to pre­serve the artis­tic merit defence which was under attack in Bill C-12 and can be expected to main­tain that posi­tion going into a new gov­ern­ment. (As an exam­ple of sup­port, the NDP orga­nized a read­ing ses­sion on Par­lia­ment Hill for Free­dom to Read Week this past Feb­ru­ary.)   Why not cite this sig­nif­i­cant defence of char­ter rights in the platform?

A chip at the Bloc

The Bloc leads all par­ties in its artic­u­la­tion of sen­si­ble cul­tural pol­icy mea­sures and its sup­port of the arts.   How­ever this sup­port is lim­ited to cul­tural issues in “La belle province” and the Bloc can­not always be counted on to sup­port mea­sures that ben­e­fit artists in the rest of Canada .

• Is it so hard to acknowl­edge that cul­ture lives in provinces beyond the con­fines of Que­bec ?

Nearly one out of ten Cana­di­ans works in the arts and cul­tural indus­tries sec­tor, mean­ing that all of these peo­ple, and their friends and rela­tions, are vitally inter­ested in how the lead­ers would respond to these ques­tions.   So why is cul­ture ignored in the media and in the lead­ers’ debate?