CCA Bul­letin 44/06

Octo­ber 25, 2006

Just the Facts

The Hon­ourable John Baird, Pres­i­dent of the Trea­sury Board, recently tabled the 2006–2007 Reports on Plans and Pri­or­i­ties (RPP) in the House of Com­mons. These reports con­tain the expen­di­ture plans for 90 fed­eral gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies includ­ing, and of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to mem­bers and sup­port­ers of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA), the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH). In time the CCA will also endeav­our to exam­ine other areas of inter­est in the fed­eral government’s 2006–2007 RPP includ­ing, for exam­ple, the Depart­ments of Indus­try and For­eign Affairs.

The Reports on Plans and Pri­or­i­ties pro­vide infor­ma­tion on a department’s plans, pri­or­i­ties and expected results over a three-year period; thus, this year’s plans extend to the period end­ing March 31, 2009.  They also pro­vide sup­ple­men­tary detail on finan­cial and human resource require­ments, major cap­i­tal projects, grants and con­tri­bu­tions, alter­na­tive ser­vice deliv­ery, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment strate­gies, hor­i­zon­tal ini­tia­tives and net pro­gram costs.  These expen­di­tures reflect the com­mit­ments made in Bud­get 2006, which was announced on May 2, 2006. (Please refer to the Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s own back­grounder for fur­ther details on the Esti­mates process.)

The Plans and Pri­or­i­ties laid out for the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH) are quite exten­sive and the doc­u­ments con­firm that many agen­cies, poli­cies, and pro­grams are either cur­rently, or will soon be, sub­jected to some kind of a review. And while the inter­nal processes of prepar­ing the 2006–2007 RPP doc­u­ment would have begun prior to the fed­eral elec­tion ear­lier this year, it is appar­ent that the new Gov­ern­ment of Canada is intent on putting its mark on sev­eral key areas, notably audio-visual pol­icy, broad­cast­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, copy­right, etc. The lan­guage in the con­sid­er­a­tions that must guide any DCH pro­gram or pol­icy is also com­pletely con­sis­tent with a focused Gov­ern­ment that made elec­toral com­mit­ments to Cana­di­ans regard­ing “respond­ing to their needs”, “offer­ing real value”, and “ensur­ing effi­cient and respon­si­ble management”.

Tell Me More

The chart out­lin­ing the fis­cal resources to be allo­cated to the Depart­ment over the next three fis­cal years shows what appears to be a drop total­ing $305.6 million.

While human resources (in full-time equiv­a­lents) will remain sta­ble, and are even set for a slight increase in 2007–2008, by 2008–2009 finan­cial resources of the DCH will be reduced to $1,166.4 mil­lion from $1,472.0 mil­lion in 2006–2007.

Cana­dian Her­itage staff explains that what we see is the nor­mal ebb and flow of resources as a result of some car­ry­overs from pre­vi­ous years that may inflate the 2006-07 years and also a num­ber of one-time expen­di­tures which only appear in 2006-07.For exam­ple, under “Sus­tain­abil­ity”, $125M is planned for 2006-07 cap­i­tal projects for the Van­cou­ver Olympics.This is one-time fund­ing for cap­i­tal costs that must be met now.Similarly, under “Cre­ation of Cana­dian Con­tent and Per­for­mance”, $100M is locked in for 2006-07 for the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund and the Depart­ment is work­ing on the longer-term renewal.There are also smaller ini­tia­tives which have one-time fund­ing for this year only reflected in the Table.These include such things as $30M for the Cen­tre for Plu­ral­ism and $10M final install­ment for a one-time endow­ment for the National Abo­rig­i­nal Achieve­ment Foundation.

While n owhere in the doc­u­ments is the impor­tant “Tomor­row Starts Today” [TST] ini­tia­tive men­tioned, we are assured that financ­ing of this pack­age is fore­cast to con­tinue to the tune of $172 mil­lion per year until March 31, 2010 (hav­ing said this, TST is not per­ma­nent, “A-based” fed­eral fund­ing). The CCA will con­tinue to mon­i­tor and com­mu­ni­cate any and all devel­op­ments related to the cru­cial issue of increased, sta­ble, multi-year fund­ing for the arts and cul­tural sector.

There are a num­ber of themes that come out on a fairly con­sis­tent basis in the report that bear men­tion­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing over the com­ing months:

• There is fre­quent men­tion of the chang­ing con­text for pol­icy and pro­gram­ming in the arts, her­itage and cul­tural indus­tries sec­tors (notably tech­no­log­i­cal change, but also chang­ing demo­graph­ics, glob­al­iza­tion, etc.), which is being used as a ratio­nale to rethink pol­icy and programs;
• In the con­text of this review of pol­icy and pro­grams, there is also fre­quent men­tion of bring­ing pol­icy and pro­grams in greater align­ment with government-wide priorities;
• Review of pol­icy and pro­grams is often linked directly to leg­isla­tive review;
• At this moment, there do not appear to be any new spend­ing ini­tia­tives planned;
• There is dis­cus­sion of devel­op­ing an Inter­na­tional Strate­gic Frame­work, which could align inter­na­tional activ­i­ties on cul­ture more closely with broader government-wide pri­or­i­ties as is men­tioned in the text (i.e. trade pro­mo­tion, closer Canada-US rela­tions, etc.). It will be crit­i­cal to sit­u­ate the issue of the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of our domes­tic Cana­dian arts and cul­ture in an emerg­ing Inter­na­tional Strate­gic Framework;
• Last, it is impor­tant to note that the planned spend­ing fig­ures in the RPP can def­i­nitely be sub­ject to change. Only the 2006–2007 main esti­mates have been voted upon, so any­thing beyond 2006–2007 can­not be counted on and could be changed because we will only know when the Esti­mates for each of the com­ing two years are tabled in Parliament.

The Hon. Bev Oda, Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, appeared in front of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee as a wit­ness regard­ing the RPP and the Main Esti­mates 2006–2007 on Wednes­day, Octo­ber 18. Noth­ing much new was learned on her Department’s pri­or­i­ties from her pre­sen­ta­tion or from the ques­tion period that ensued except that more stud­ies and reviews are under way “to ensure that Cana­di­ans get good value for their money”.

Tell Me Even More!

The RPP for the DCH gives the fol­low­ing pre­am­ble as an overview of pri­or­i­ties for the next 3 years:

Given the rapid pace of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, evolv­ing mar­kets, and demo­graphic change, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage is con­tin­u­ally review­ing and adjust­ing its pro­grams and poli­cies to ensure that they meet the needs of Cana­di­ans. The Department’s pro­grams and poli­cies are guided by these considerations:

• ensur­ing effi­cient and respon­si­ble management;
• respond­ing to the needs of Canadians;
• set­ting objec­tives and out­comes that are clear; and
• offer­ing real value to Canadians

More specif­i­cally, Sec­tion II of the report pro­vides a descrip­tion of each of eight pri­or­i­ties of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH) and the details on the key ini­tia­tives in each of the pri­or­ity areas. (It is impor­tant to note that the pri­or­i­ties are cat­e­go­rized as fol­lows: an ongo­ing pri­or­ity is con­sid­ered to have no end date, whereas a pre­vi­ously com­mit­ted pri­or­ity is con­sid­ered to have an esti­mated end date.)

(Each of the Pri­or­i­ties and Key Ini­tia­tives explained in more detail)

Erra­tum

In CCA Bul­letin 43/06 (Octo­ber 19, 2006), we acci­den­tally use the old name of the Peri­od­i­cal Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Canada, which changed its name to Pro­fes­sional Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Canada last May.