Of this and that and other things: A pre-holiday wrap up (Part 2)

CCA Bul­letin 32/10

Decem­ber 20, 2010

 

 

 

This will most likely be our last bul­letin of the year, but before we wish you all the best for the New Year, we must fin­ish our year-end wrap-up of a num­ber of impor­tant issues:

• An update on the 2010-11 fed­eral budget
• An update on the Canada/European Union negotiations
• The lat­est on the long-form census
• Cul­ture Days 2010 revisited

Fed­eral Bud­get 2010-11: the CBC does not fare as well as ini­tially thought!

The gov­ern­ment released the sec­ond set of sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates for the 2010-11 fis­cal year (The CCA reported on the first set, sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates A, in its 2010 Fed­eral Bud­get Analy­sis).

One of the find­ings to emerge from the CCA’s analy­sis of this most recent set of sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates per­tains to the source of some new fund­ing. Bud­get 2010 announced that orga­ni­za­tions would be expected to under­take ‘cost con­tain­ment mea­sures’ to reduce the pace of growth of oper­at­ing expen­di­tures. That means that only some of the new fund­ing to orga­ni­za­tions in the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates is truly ‘new’. A por­tion of the fund­ing is sourced by the orga­ni­za­tions them­selves from inter­nal cuts.

The impact appears to be the most severe for the CBC. Its annual $60 mil­lion top-up received this year in sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates B effec­tively rep­re­sents new fund­ing of only $46.2 mil­lion. This is the case because $13.8 mil­lion was sourced from ‘sav­ings’ iden­ti­fied as part of cost con­tain­ment mea­sures to reduce the rate of growth in oper­at­ing expen­di­tures announced in bud­get 2010.

The Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage was also affected by this prac­tice. While the orga­ni­za­tion received an addi­tional $33.2 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates B, $2.2 mil­lion was sourced from ‘cost con­tain­ment mea­sures’. The addi­tional fund­ing received was directed to the Sport Sup­port Pro­gram ($30.2 mil­lion) and the Michaëlle Jean Foun­da­tion ($3.0 mil­lion). Given that the new funds accru­ing from the sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates are not ded­i­cated to cul­tural expen­di­tures, it begs the ques­tion, how much of the $2.2 mil­lion in ‘sav­ings’ in the depart­ment was effec­tively real­lo­cated from cul­tural pro­grams to these new expen­di­tures? The sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates doc­u­ments note that close to half a mil­lion of the $2.2 mil­lion in sav­ings rep­re­sented reduc­tions in the bud­gets of the offices of the Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of State. How­ever, how much of the rest ($1.7 mil­lion) came from the Department’s cul­tural activ­i­ties? The CCA has placed a request on this mat­ter to the Depart­ment and will report back on its response.

The Depart­ment also trans­ferred $150,000 to Health Canada ‘to sup­port research into access to health and social ser­vices for French-speaking minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties’ and $272,000 to the Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties Research Coun­cil to sup­port research that informs pol­icy on sport participation.

National muse­ums that received fund­ing to address oper­at­ing pres­sures were also sub­ject to this prac­tice to vary­ing degrees, as noted in the table below.

Orga­ni­za­tion	Total Fund­ing Received in Sup­ple­men­tary Esti­mates B	Amount Sourced from Cuts Within the Organization
Cana­dian Museum of Civilization	$6.3 mil­lion	$488,000
Cana­dian Museum of Nature	$3.0 mil­lion	$205,853
National Gallery of Canada	$2.0 mil­lion	$314,102
Canada Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Museum	$3.7 mil­lion	$3,528

In sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates B, Library and Archives Canada received a $1.0 mil­lion trans­fer from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage for the Dic­tio­nary of Cana­dian Biog­ra­phy and the National Arts Cen­tre received a $500,000 trans­fer (half from the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage and half from West­ern Eco­nomic Diver­si­fi­ca­tion Canada) for the Prairie Scene fes­ti­val in Ottawa.

The Canada/EU nego­ti­a­tions: what about culture?

Through the joint action of the CCA and the Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity, there was a sec­ond meet­ing between rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the cul­tural sec­tor and offi­cials from the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade Canada and the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage to dis­cuss the nego­ti­a­tions between Canada and the Euro­pean Union on a Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nomic and Trade Agree­ment (CETA). As agreed upon after the first meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber, the par­ties recon­vened on Novem­ber 25 to review the sit­u­a­tion after the fifth round of nego­ti­a­tions took place in Ottawa in Octo­ber. It was agreed that the con­ver­sa­tions would remain con­fi­den­tial to allow for a frank and open dis­cus­sion of issues and so as not to affect Cana­dian posi­tions at the nego­ti­a­tion table.

A num­ber of top­ics were dis­cussed, includ­ing: the breadth of the cul­tural exemp­tion; the inter­est expressed by the Euro­peans in own­er­ship rules for book pub­lish­ing, print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion; intel­lec­tual prop­erty; labour mobil­ity for artists and cul­tural work­ers; and the par­al­lel nego­ti­a­tion con­cern­ing a cul­tural coop­er­a­tion pro­to­col, an issue put for­ward by the Que­bec government.

Cul­tural issues have not been broached dur­ing the last three rounds of nego­ti­a­tions, but this will change as we near the end of the process. The next round of nego­ti­a­tions will take place in Brus­sels in mid-January. The CCA con­tin­ues to fol­low this process closely and will keep you informed on future developments.

The long-form cen­sus: clar­i­fi­ca­tions about the “alter­na­tive” put for­ward by the government

In July, the CCA joined an increas­ing num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions from all walks of life to protest the government’s deci­sion to abol­ish the manda­tory long-form cen­sus and replace it with what experts at home and abroad have con­demned as a flawed and more expen­sive vol­un­tary house­hold survey.

Upon can­celling the manda­tory long-form cen­sus, the gov­ern­ment claimed it would spend $30 mil­lion to encour­age more Cana­di­ans to fill out the vol­un­tary ver­sion. Last week, Sta­tis­tics Canada told The Cana­dian Press that $5 mil­lion of that $30 mil­lion will be used to cover extra print­ing and postage costs related to the sur­vey, because the num­ber of house­holds receiv­ing the long ques­tion­naire is going up from one-fifth to one-third. Addi­tion­ally, another $10 mil­lion of the total is now being spent to add two extra ques­tions on lan­guage to the short cen­sus, which remains compulsory.

The CCA shares the con­cerns of other groups regard­ing the seri­ous con­se­quences of this deci­sion, and notes that the main loss is the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a num­ber of Cana­di­ans, includ­ing First Nations, the poor­est and rich­est of Cana­di­ans and the self employed, who rep­re­sent a very large num­ber of artists and cre­ators. As a result, we will lose impor­tant data on the cul­tural workforce.

Another con­se­quence to the cul­tural sec­tor is the very seri­ous impact this new approach will have in the design of sur­veys them­selves. A cen­sus, or some other instru­ment that lists all indi­vid­u­als in a pop­u­la­tion, is required for the proper design of vol­un­tary sam­ple sur­veys. Try­ing to use a sam­ple house­hold sur­vey in place of a cen­sus to design social or house­hold sur­veys will effec­tively under­mine the entire sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem as it relates to non-business data.

Cul­ture Days 2010

revis­ited

In late Novem­ber, I had the priv­i­lege of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Cul­ture Days retreat in Toronto with 30 peo­ple from all across the coun­try who had gath­ered at their own expense to take stock of the first pan-Canadian cel­e­bra­tion of arts and cul­ture. Mod­elled after Quebec’s Journées de la cul­ture, Cul­ture Days is a col­lab­o­ra­tive vol­un­teer move­ment that aims to raise the aware­ness, acces­si­bil­ity, par­tic­i­pa­tion and engage­ment of all Cana­di­ans in the arts and cul­tural life of their com­mu­ni­ties. The main forces behind the ini­tia­tive are the mem­bers of the Cana­dian Arts Summit.

The pur­pose of the two-day retreat was to review the ups and the downs of this first edi­tion and plan not only for the 2011 event, but for the long-term. By all accounts, this first national event was a suc­cess, if only in cre­at­ing aware­ness of its very exis­tence. In a few months, one in three Cana­di­ans had heard about Cul­ture Days, a rare achieve­ment for any new ini­tia­tive or “prod­uct launch”.

A num­ber of issues were iden­ti­fied, among them the impor­tance of con­vey­ing to par­tic­i­pat­ing indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that this is a long-term invest­ment in posi­tion­ing arts and cul­ture in Cana­dian soci­ety and as such, should not be gauged in terms of imme­di­ate ticket sales. A related issue that was also debated was the “free” aspect of the oper­a­tion. Even in Que­bec, where Journées de la cul­ture will cel­e­brate its 15th anniver­sary next year, many are ques­tion­ing why artists should once again be sub­si­diz­ing the pro­mo­tion of arts and cul­ture in our society.

On the orga­ni­za­tional front, given the grass roots nature of the oper­a­tion, dis­cus­sions cen­tered on the respec­tive roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties of the national, provin­cial and local orga­ni­za­tions. Many lessons were learned and judg­ing by the energy level around the room, one can only expect that the 2011 edi­tion will build on the remark­able suc­cess of its pre­de­ces­sor. Cul­ture Days 2011 will take place from Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 30 to Sun­day, Octo­ber 2.