Late Spring Echoes from the Hill

CCA Bul­letin 26/06

Ottawa, June 5, 2006

The Hon. Bev Oda appeared before the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage on Thurs­day June 1 to dis­cuss her Department’s pri­or­i­ties. Obvi­ously, like so many other things on the Hill these days, the pro­ceed­ings were largely coloured by elec­toral pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. The Min­is­ter spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time and effort read­ing seg­ments of her open­ing 10 minute state­ment in French and talk­ing about the Fran­coph­one Sec­re­tariat that the Con­ser­v­a­tive party has promised it would cre­ate within the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (more about that in a moment). Unfor­tu­nately, a “last minute sched­ul­ing con­flict” pre­vented Ms Oda from appear­ing for the full two-hour ques­tion and answer ses­sion she had been con­vened to, allow­ing for only one hour of dis­cus­sion. This was met with some cha­grin from oppo­si­tion party com­mit­tee mem­bers who had a con­sid­er­able num­ber of ques­tions they wanted to raise and were lim­ited to two rounds of five min­utes each includ­ing, as they learned on the spot, the time the Min­is­ter took to answer.

Thus, those in atten­dance, includ­ing staff from the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA), did not learn much about the Cana­dian Her­itage Minister’s pri­or­i­ties beyond gen­er­al­i­ties on the Fran­coph­one Sec­re­tariat and the repeated desire of the Gov­ern­ment to sup­port arts and cul­ture in ways appro­pri­ate to the con­text cre­ated by new tech­nolo­gies. The Min­is­ter noted with some sat­is­fac­tion the inclu­sion of $50 mil­lion to be added over two years to the Canada Coun­cil bud­get as part of the May 2 fed­eral Bud­get. There was a hint that this money will be added on a per­ma­nent basis, which may be good news even if the amount falls well short of what is needed. Ms Oda also trum­peted the sig­nif­i­cance of the announced removal of the rest of the cap­i­tal gains tax on pub­licly traded secu­ri­ties given to char­i­ties and men­tioned that within days of this announce­ment, some $85 M in dona­tions to cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions had been reported to her office!

In response to insis­tent ques­tions from the Lib­eral Cana­dian Her­itage critic, Ms Oda promised that she would present Mem­bers of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee with the terms of ref­er­ence she intends to set for the upcom­ing review of the CBC man­date, though she did not iden­tify when this would hap­pen. While repeat­ing the Government’s whole­hearted sup­port for the notion of Cana­dian pub­lic broad­cast­ing, Ms. Oda also com­mented that it would be pre­ma­ture to talk about the level of fund­ing the CBC may require until such time as the man­date review is car­ried out, as this will deter­mine what kind of pro­gram­ming Cana­di­ans want from their pub­lic broad­caster and on what plat­forms such pro­gram­ming should be presented.

As for the Fran­coph­one Sec­re­tariat promised dur­ing the recent fed­eral elec­tion, it would appear that Min­is­ter Oda is set to have a very speedy con­sul­ta­tion on the sub­ject. Some 30 odd orga­ni­za­tions, both from within and out­side of Québec, have been hastily con­tacted by phone over the past week to see if they could par­tic­i­pate in a one-day round­table dis­cus­sion on Fri­day June 9 to define the role and nature of this new struc­ture. Ple­nary ses­sions are sched­uled, along with work­ing ses­sions, and Min­is­ters Oda, the Hon. Josee Verner (Min­is­ter for La Fran­coph­o­nie and Offi­cial Lan­guages) and the Hon. Lawrence Can­non (Min­is­ter of Trans­port, Infra­struc­ture and Com­mu­ni­ties) are expected to spend some time with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­i­ous arts and cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions. The CCA has been invited to par­tic­i­pate and expects to receive con­fir­ma­tion some dis­cus­sion papers shortly. Unfor­tu­natley, like so many not for profit orga­ni­za­tions at this time of year, the CCA is hav­ing a Board meet­ing and Annual Gen­eral Meet­ing on June 10 and 11. While the CCA thinks the pro­posal to estab­lish a Fran­coph­one Sec­re­tariat is wor­thy of dis­cus­sion, we are con­cerned that this process is being moved along with­out the care­ful atten­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion that the issue mer­its. We will keep you informed in a future bulletin.

Finally, as some of you may have seen in press reports, there was a sig­nif­i­cant debate in the House of Com­mons this past Tues­day May 30 related to a motion pre­sented by Lib­eral Her­itage critic Mau­ril Bélanger, namely:

“That, in view of the rat­i­fi­ca­tion by Canada of the Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion and Pro­mo­tion of the Diver­sity of Cul­tural Expres­sions, the House insist that the gov­ern­ment pro­vide direc­tion to trade nego­tia­tors to ensure that domes­tic cul­tural rights are not under­mined in any trade talks, and that its depart­ments and agen­cies main­tain the pro­gram poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions in sup­port of Canada’s artis­tic sec­tor and cul­tural indus­tries, in par­tic­u­lar, by main­tain­ing or enhanc­ing: (a) exist­ing Cana­dian cul­tural con­tent require­ments; (b) cur­rent restric­tions on for­eign own­er­ship in the cul­tural sec­tor; and © finan­cial sup­port for pub­lic broad­cast­ing in both offi­cial languages.”

The motion was even­tu­ally passed 155 to 121 with the sup­port of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment from all oppo­si­tion par­ties fac­ing up the Con­ser­v­a­tive MPs present who voted against it. The debate lasted for much of Tues­day and cer­tainly con­tains some intrigu­ing quotes from both the Gov­ern­ment and Oppo­si­tion benches. Here are a few key excerpts from the Gov­ern­ment side, for those of you who have nei­ther the time nor the incli­na­tion to sift through the Hansard (the num­ber refers to the para­graph num­ber in Hansard for the debate on May 30th). How­ever, see­ing that sum­mer weather seems to have arrived in many of the geo­graphic regions of this great coun­try, the CCA sug­gests that peo­ple print out copies of the debate for an engag­ing, page-turning read on the beach!

“I can­not sup­port the sug­ges­tion that by main­tain­ing the Cana­dian con­tent reg­u­la­tions as is, is the best way to advance the need for this impor­tant seg­ment of our pop­u­la­tion. Exist­ing Cana­dian cul­tural con­tent require­ments, as writ­ten in the motion, would limit the abil­ity to ensure that cul­tural con­tent require­ments can be adjusted to meet the chang­ing real­i­ties in many sec­tors. We are talk­ing not only about broad­cast­ing, but the arts, pub­lish­ing and new media, as well as many new tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques not yet even con­ceived“
Hon. Bev Oda (Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage and Sta­tus of Women, CPC, 1245)

“The gov­ern­ment will not be bound to fund the CBC at any level, espe­cially in light of the fact we are about to under­take a review of the CBC’s man­date. The kind of com­mit­ment con­tained in the motion will not allow the CBC to develop a strate­gic plan. The gov­ern­ment will ensure that the CBC breaks out of the cycle of short term plans that it has been locked into for the past decade by the for­mer Lib­eral government.”

Mr. Jim Abbott (Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary to the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, CPC, 1050)

“Essen­tially this motion tells Cana­di­ans that Cana­dian artists can­not com­pete glob­ally. It says that Cana­dian tal­ent is not as viable as Amer­i­can or Euro­pean tal­ent and that with­out gov­ern­ment assis­tance, arts and cul­ture in Canada could not sur­vive. I sim­ply do not believe that gov­ern­ment does every­thing best and I def­i­nitely do not believe that Cana­dian artists can­not com­pete glob­ally.“
Mr. Gary Schel­len­berger (Chair of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage, CPC, 1300)