CCA’s Review of Current Federal Government Reviews

CCA Bul­letin 39/06

Sep­tem­ber 15, 2006

Just the Facts

As illus­trated in our recent bul­letins, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is track­ing a num­ber of pol­icy reviews cur­rently under­way within the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Some of these are of more direct impor­tance to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor than oth­ers, but all have con­sid­er­able poten­tial to effect pro­found change. We thought it would be use­ful in this bul­letin to do a “review of reviews” to give a broad pic­ture of all that is going on in Ottawa these days that is of impor­tance to the arts and cul­tural sector.

The CCA Sec­re­tariat is keep­ing a watch­ing brief on all of these reviews. This is a chal­leng­ing task, as some processes are more trans­par­ent than oth­ers. Nonethe­less, in the inter­ests of keep­ing our Board and mem­ber­ship informed, the CCA will issue peri­odic and timely updates on any progress, includ­ing inter­ven­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions, or changes to the man­dates or mem­ber­ship of each of these review processes.

Tell me more about cur­rent cul­tural pol­icy reviews

Pro­gram review within the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage — Since the instal­la­tion of the new gov­ern­ment, the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, the Hon. Bev Oda, has sig­naled that many pro­grams of the Depart­ment (PCH) are under review. These are inter­nal reviews mainly, and they have pro­vided few oppor­tu­ni­ties for pub­lic input or scrutiny of the actual process or stan­dards used in assess­ing the effi­cacy of fund­ing programs.

Some of these reviews were under­taken in sup­port of the revised terms and con­di­tions of some of the pro­grams cre­ated under the ini­tia­tive “Tomor­row Starts Today”. The Depart­ment and the Min­is­ter have indi­cated that these reviews will be com­pleted by Sep­tem­ber 2006.

Review of PCH port­fo­lio agen­cies’ man­dates and fis­cal need — In addi­tion to the Depart­men­tal review process, this past June, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage began to dis­cuss a review of the Cana­dian Her­itage port­fo­lio agen­cies’ man­dates and fis­cal needs. The Chair of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee, MP Gary Schel­len­berger (Perth-Wellington), requested that the Par­lia­men­tary Research Bureau spend this past sum­mer prepar­ing an overview of these agen­cies for the review of Com­mit­tee Mem­bers in the fall. The Stand­ing Com­mit­tee sup­ported this request and will likely decide how they pri­or­i­tize any review processes they will under­take in the com­ing months once Par­lia­ment resumes sit­ting next week.

There had also been noises in the late spring/early sum­mer about a forth­com­ing CBC man­date review; how­ever, the gov­ern­ment has shown some ret­i­cence about embark­ing on such a review at this time.

Review of pub­lic diplo­macy at For­eign Affairs — The Inter­na­tional Pol­icy Paper released by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment in April 2005 has been shelved by the new gov­ern­ment. The Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs is now review­ing the pro­posed approach to pub­lic diplo­macy. Pub­lic diplo­macy is the revamped “Third Pil­lar” of Cana­dian for­eign pol­icy, and this is where the arts and cul­ture sec­tor fits into the larger inter­na­tional strat­egy. The Depart­ment hopes to con­clude the process in the com­ing months and, although there have been infor­mal con­sul­ta­tions this review process is largely an inter­nal exercise.

Spe­cial exam­i­na­tion of the Canada Coun­cil — The Office of the Audi­tor Gen­eral has announced that it will under­take the statu­tory spe­cial exam­i­na­tion of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. This type of audit is applied every five years to all Crown Cor­po­ra­tions and agen­cies like the Coun­cil and the CBC. The tim­ing of this spe­cial exam­i­na­tion has not yet been announced and the Board of Direc­tors of the insti­tu­tion decides if it wants to make the report pub­lic. It is impor­tant to note that the Audi­tor Gen­eral has given the Coun­cil a clean bill of health for the past decade!

CRTC Reviews — We are all await­ing the Cana­dian Radio-Television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (CRTC) report on the review of the Com­mer­cial Radio Pol­icy which took place over the past year. The CCA pre­sented a brief on this topic in March and also taken part in the pub­lic hear­ing held in Gatineau, Québec in May.

At the spe­cific request of Cab­i­net, the CRTC has also under­taken a study on the impact of new tech­nolo­gies on broad­cast­ing, as well as a Review of cer­tain aspects of the reg­u­la­tory frame­work for over-the-air television.

With respect to the new tech­nolo­gies study, the CCA’s Sep­tem­ber 1 sub­mis­sion “The Future of Envi­ron­ment of Canada’s Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem: Empty Pipes?” has gar­nered a bit of atten­tion amongst cul­tural indus­try groups and in the blo­gos­phere. A pub­lic hear­ing will take place and the CRTC report to Cab­i­net is due “no later than Decem­ber 14, 2006″. As for the TV pol­icy review, the CCA plans to file an inter­ven­tion with the CRTC by the Sep­tem­ber 27 dead­line and we cer­tainly hope to appear at the sub­se­quent hear­ings, which are sched­uled to com­mence in Gatineau on Novem­ber 27.

Tell me more about other cur­rent reviews

Left over from the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment is the Review of Fed­eral Labour Stan­dards. The final report was sched­uled to be released in June 2006; how­ever, to date the paper has not appeared and recent CCA calls to the Com­mis­sion have not been returned.

This Review was a pub­lic and trans­par­ent exer­cise in which sev­eral inter­ven­ers from the arts and cul­ture sec­tor were involved. The gist of these inter­ven­tions was to rec­om­mend mea­sures to ensure that the inter­ests of the grow­ing share of self-employed Cana­di­ans are bet­ter reflected and served through revi­sions to the Labour Code. The fed­eral Sta­tus of the Artist leg­is­la­tion was brought for­ward to the review process as an exam­ple of how these inter­ests might be addressed.

The Min­is­ter of Finance, the Hon. Jim Fla­herty, has appointed two high-level reviews of fed­eral fis­cal pol­icy. The first is the Blue Rib­bon Panel on Grants and Con­tri­bu­tions. This panel, which is required to report to the Min­is­ter by Decem­ber 2006, has been given a man­date to:

• review the admin­is­tra­tive require­ments indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions must meet in order to access gov­ern­ment grant and con­tri­bu­tion programs,
• exam­ine the issues faced by the gov­ern­ment depart­ments in man­ag­ing these programs,
• assess whether instru­ments other than grants and con­tri­bu­tions are more appro­pri­ate for fund­ing some programs.

The CCA endorses the August 2006 sub­mis­sion pre­pared by Imag­ine Canada to this Blue Rib­bon Panel. We have also been invited to appear as wit­nesses in Ottawa on Sep­tem­ber 27 as part of an Imag­ine Canada del­e­ga­tion, and the CCA we will cer­tainly keep its mem­bers and sup­port­ers apprised of any note­wor­thy devel­op­ments on this front.

The sec­ond Expert Panel, which reg­u­lar CCA Bul­letin read­ers will of course recall as the sub­ject of our pre­vi­ous pub­li­ca­tion, was appointed by the Min­is­ter of Finance to exam­ine the eli­gi­bil­ity terms of the pro­posed Children’s Fit­ness Tax Credit as well as the admin­is­tra­tive chal­lenges related to its man­age­ment. The CCA appeared as a wit­ness in front of the panel on Sep­tem­ber 11 and pre­sented our recent brief on the issue, which is also one of nine rec­om­men­da­tions in our pre-budget sub­mis­sion, “A Cre­ative New Way of Think­ing”.

In addi­tion to every­thing men­tioned above about cur­rent fed­eral reviews, there are also con­sul­ta­tions under­way on the fis­cal imbal­ance, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on infra­struc­ture and post sec­ondary edu­ca­tion and train­ing. With respect to the ques­tion of infra­struc­ture the CCA sent a let­ter for the web con­sul­ta­tion, which closed Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 8.