What if CCA asked the questions in the federal leaders’ debates?

Bul­letin 53/05
CCA’s Fed­eral Elec­tion Advo­cacy 2006

Ottawa, Decem­ber 21, 2005 – The first round of party lead­ers’ debates for the 2006 fed­eral elec­tion
have come and gone, and media pun­dits and party “war roomers” con­tinue to weigh the mer­its and
draw­backs of the new for­mat while sip­ping their hol­i­day eggnog. The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the
Arts is focused pri­mar­ily on the con­tent of both debates and not sur­pris­ingly, arts and cul­ture issues
were absent from the four hours in total of tele­vised state­ments. (Unless one counts Paul Martin’s
pass­ing ref­er­ence to Quebec’s “artists and writ­ers” in response to a viewer ques­tion late dur­ing Fri­day
evening’s live broadcast.)

In Bul­letin 52/05 www.ccarts.ca/en/electionbulletins.htm the CCA unveiled its five broad pri­or­i­ties
for the cur­rent fed­eral elec­tion cam­paign and beyond. We are ask­ing all fed­eral par­ties to artic­u­late
how, if elected, they plan to “walk the talk” for Canada’s arts and cul­ture. More to the point, the CCA
has since bro­ken down its five key issues into three detailed ques­tions for each pri­or­ity area.
All 15 ques­tions have been for­mally sent to the offices of the fed­eral polit­i­cal par­ties and we will share
their responses when they are avail­able. The CCA encour­ages its mem­bers and sup­port­ers to use and
cir­cu­late any or all of these ques­tions in your own com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the par­ties, with indi­vid­ual
can­di­dates in your rid­ings, and at all-party debates. Here then are fif­teen ques­tions the CCA would
have asked the lead­ers, if we could con­vene our own national tele­vised debates:
1) Invest­ing in Canada’s Arts and Cul­ture at Home and Around the World: Hon­our­ing our
Com­mit­ment to Diver­sity
a) Will your party ensure that new fed­eral fund­ing for the arts and cul­ture announced
on Novem­ber 23, which included an increase to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil for
the Arts and other key invest­ments, will be reflected in the 2006 Fed­eral Bud­get?
b) Does your party sup­port a review of Canada’s new inter­na­tional pol­icy state­ment to
restore arts and cul­ture as a key aspect of pub­lic diplo­macy? Would your party
sup­port increased financ­ing for the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs’ cul­tural pro­grams?
c) Does your party intend to extend the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Heritage’s “Tomor­row
Starts Today” fund­ing pack­age beyond the cur­rent timetable? Would your party
increase finan­cial com­mit­ments to its com­po­nent pro­grams?
2) Equi­table Treat­ment for Cana­dian Artists and Cre­ators
a) Does your party sup­port the objec­tives of CCA’s “Fair Tax Treat­ment of Pro­fes­sional
Artists Cam­paign”, which are:
– To estab­lish a pol­icy that all pro­fes­sional artists will be deemed to be car­ry­ing on
a busi­ness for pur­poses of their artis­tic income (inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor sta­tus)
unless
o in the case where there is no col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rela­tion­ship, an engager
and the artist enter into a con­tract of ser­vice (employer-employee
rela­tion­ship) that is explicit and unam­bigu­ous, or
o an engager and an asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing a group of artists nego­ti­ate a
pro­vi­sion that artists gov­erned by a col­lec­tive agree­ment are in a con­tract of
ser­vice rela­tion­ship.
– To have a community-agreed test of “pro­fes­sion­al­ism” replace the “rea­son­able
expec­ta­tion of profit” test now used by the Canada Rev­enue Agency.
b) Does your party sup­port the devel­op­ment of a pro­gram by which self-employed work­ers,
depen­dent con­trac­tors, and Cana­di­ans in other non-standard work could access full social
ben­e­fits with­out the loss of their self-employment status?

c) Does your party intend to intro­duce fur­ther revi­sions to the Copy­right Act? Will your
party com­mit to enact­ing leg­is­la­tion that enhances the moral and eco­nomic rights of
cre­ators and copy­right own­ers?
3) Canada’s Broad­cast­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sys­tems in the 21st Cen­tury
a) Does your party sup­port CBC’s request for new monies for regional and local ser­vices and
for Cana­dian tele­vi­sion drama? Would your party pro­vide long-term, sta­ble fund­ing for
the CBC?
b) Will your party ensure that the cul­tural objec­tives of the Broad­cast­ing Act are respected in
the face of chal­lenges posed by new com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies, such as: Inter­net,
satel­lite radio, pod-casting, and television-enabled cel­lu­lar phones?
c) What are your party’s plans to ensure a more trans­par­ent and guar­an­teed rev­enue flow
from all media, but par­tic­u­larly from dig­i­tal media, to the own­ers and licensees of
copy­right mate­ri­als?
4) Sus­tain­ing Dis­tinc­tive Cana­dian Cul­tural Indus­tries
a) Will your party com­mit to main­tain the cur­rent level of 53 % Cana­dian own­er­ship rules in
our media, broad­cast­ing, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems, and ensure that Cana­di­ans
will always own our own air­waves?
b) What is your party’s posi­tion on the con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship in Canada’s cul­tural
indus­tries? What quan­tifi­able lim­its to the con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and ver­ti­cal
inte­gra­tion within the var­i­ous cul­tural indus­tries will your party pro­pose?
c) Given that Canada recently rat­i­fied the UNESCO Con­ven­tion on the Diver­sity of Cul­tural
Expres­sions, will your party develop poli­cies to pro­tect Cana­dian own­er­ship of and
encour­age more invest­ment in our cul­tural indus­tries by Cana­di­ans? What would those
be?
5) Hon­our­ing Canada’s Past, Look­ing to Our Future
a) Does your party sup­port the devel­op­ment of a new Cana­dian muse­ums pol­icy, which
would include the invest­ment of new monies in sus­tained, multi-year, pre­dictable
pro­grams?
b) What are your party’s spe­cific plans to pro­vide incen­tives and oppor­tu­ni­ties for young
Cana­di­ans to become more active in the arts and cul­ture?
c) Would your party com­mit to a national men­tor­ship strat­egy to facil­i­tate skills
devel­op­ment for Cana­di­ans who want to pur­sue careers in the arts and cul­tural labour
force?
Finally, work con­tin­ues on a num­ber of other election-related advo­cacy fronts:
– A “Flash­back / Flash for­ward?” follow-up to our own 49/05 bul­letin “Real­ity Check: Where
Busi­ness Left Off in the House of Com­mons”. This bul­letin will pro­file what posi­tions par­ties took
on arts and cul­ture issues dur­ing the May/June 2004 fed­eral elec­tion cam­paign, and what progress (if
any) was made dur­ing the 38th Par­lia­ment. What issues remain un-resolved and may return after
Jan­u­ary 23rd?
2 of 3
– The CCA will pro­vide analy­ses of all polit­i­cal par­ties’ plat­forms per­tain­ing to arts and
cul­ture issues. To date, the Bloc Que­be­cois is the only party that has offi­cially unveiled their full
elec­tion plat­form, but a flurry of pre-holiday announce­ments and promises are fly­ing around like
snowflakes.
– The CCA will pro­vide one-page back­grounders of “facts and fig­ures” to help make the case
for each of our five over­ar­ch­ing pri­or­ity issues. In turn, we will pre­pare a “doorstep kit” of
ques­tions you can raise about arts and cul­ture when can­di­dates come knock­ing, look­ing for your
vote.
Last, please note that the Broad­cast­ing Con­sor­tium (CBC/Radio-Canada, CTV, Global Tele­vi­sion
and TVA) con­firmed last week that the sec­ond set of fed­eral party lead­ers debates will be held on
Jan­u­ary 9 and 10 2006 in Mon­treal at La Mai­son de Radio-Canada. The English-language debate
will take place on Jan­u­ary 9 and the French-language debate will take place on Jan­u­ary 10
between 8:00 pm ET and 10:00 pm ET. The Con­sor­tium plans to announce details regard­ing
debate themes at a later date, and as always, the CCA encour­ages our mem­bers to “stay tuned” to
their bul­letins. We plan to keep our mem­bers informed about how they might par­tic­i­pate in this
and other election-related forums, with the aim to work col­lec­tively to get our issues on the
agenda!
The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts presents:
Map­ping Canada’s Cul­tural Pol­icy: Where do we go from here?
March 2–4, 2006
Sher­a­ton Hotel, Ottawa
Reg­is­ter now at: www.ccarts.ca/en/events/NPCChalmers2006registration.htm
For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.ccarts.ca/en/events/NPCChalmers2006.htm