CCA Bul­letin 09/07

Ottawa, Fri­day, March 9, 2007

Just the Facts…

As the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts looks back at its National Pol­icy Con­fer­ence held just one year ago in early March 2006, this exer­cise pro­vides us with the oppor­tu­nity to report on the progress the orga­ni­za­tion has achieved in deal­ing with the pri­or­i­ties that con­fer­ence del­e­gates rec­om­mended to the CCA Board of Governors:

• increased and sta­ble fund­ing for the arts and cul­ture sector,
• equity for artists, cre­ators, and arts professionals,
• Cana­dian con­tent and own­er­ship reg­u­la­tion in the cul­tural industries,
• Cul­tural diver­sity and youth engagement
• Fed­eral elec­tion readiness.

Over the past year, the CCA has engaged all five areas of con­cern: a full report on activ­i­ties can be found on our web site.

The first three pol­icy and advo­cacy issues have taken us into places that may seem some­times for­eign to the tra­di­tional approaches to seek­ing increased and sta­ble fund­ing for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. So today, we thought we would con­nect the dots, explain why pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with the Cana­dian audio­vi­sual sec­tor are so promi­nent these days and pub­lish the new list of CCA pol­icy pri­or­i­ties for 2007-08 recently approved by the Board of Governors.

Tell Me More

The CCA is a mem­ber of the Cana­dian Arts Coali­tion request­ing sub­stan­tial and per­ma­nent increases to the bud­get of the Canada Coun­cil beyond the one-time, over two years $50M increase of the last fed­eral bud­get. Increas­ing Canada’s invest­ment in cul­tural cre­ativ­ity across the coun­try through the Coun­cil is a fun­da­men­tal tool for the gov­ern­ment to ensure that there is such a thing as a dis­tinc­tive Cana­dian cul­ture to pro­mote at home and abroad.

But there are other cru­cial ways of sup­port­ing the Cana­dian cul­tural sec­tor and the Board of Gov­er­nors of the CCA has instructed the Sec­re­tariat to address them in var­i­ous ways through­out the year. This has led us, through the pre-budget con­sul­ta­tion process, to press for increased fund­ing to var­i­ous Her­itage Port­fo­lio agen­cies and Crown Cor­po­ra­tions; for an ade­quately funded new muse­ums pol­icy, for mak­ing Tomor­row Starts Today a per­ma­nent pro­gram, for copy­right and resid­ual rev­enue exemp­tion, for so-called “soft” social ben­e­fits for artists and cre­ators, etc…

Book and mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers, sound record­ing artists and pro­duc­ers, film, video, and new media pro­duc­ers also enjoy access to a suite of fund­ing pro­grams at the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (DCH) that are seen to be crit­i­cal to their sur­vival and their success.

Many will have noticed that the audio­vi­sual cul­tural sub-sector has mobi­lized a lot of our energy over the past year. In a sense, this is not sur­pris­ing since it is under the pro­vi­sions of the Broad­cast­ing Act that we find the most clearly stated cul­tural objec­tives of Cana­dian soci­ety as a nation and it is under the same Act that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has by far its largest finan­cial impact on Cana­dian cul­ture. Appro­pri­a­tions to the CBC, fund­ing for Tele­film, the National Film Board, con­tri­bu­tions to the Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund, these invest­ments in Cana­dian cul­tural expres­sion far out­strip any other finan­cial impli­ca­tion Ottawa has in the Cana­dian cul­tural sector.

All of these broad­cast­ers, inde­pen­dent pro­duc­ers, cable, satel­lite com­pa­nies and other broad­cast dis­tri­b­u­tion under­tak­ings also pay roy­al­ties and resid­ual pay­ments to artists, cre­ators, and copy­right own­ers to com­pen­sate them for the pub­lic use of their work.  The pre­cise amount is dif­fi­cult to nail down but it is eas­ily in the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dollars.

Finally, it is in this sec­tor that we wit­ness tec­tonic plate move­ments which may rip apart the cur­rent sys­tem with­out any clear vision of where we are going in terms of the cul­tural objec­tives set by Par­lia­ment. Over the past year, large issues have indeed loomed over the audio­vi­sual cul­tural sec­tor which place seri­ous pres­sure on the ecol­ogy of increased and sta­ble fund­ing for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor at large.

The recent Cana­dian Tele­vi­sion Fund cri­sis, the upcom­ing mega-mergers in the sec­tor, the revi­sion of the man­date of the CBC, the still awaited CRTC “over-the air” Tele­vi­sion Pol­icy, the issues of con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship and of for­eign own­er­ship of the back­bone of our audio­vi­sual sec­tor, the review role and per­for­mance of the reg­u­la­tor in sup­port­ing the objec­tives of the Broad­cast­ing Act, all these events are tak­ing place or about to take place against the back­drop of rad­i­cal changes in the ways young Cana­di­ans are access­ing the most widely con­sumed forms of cul­tural expres­sion, and in a pol­icy uni­verse where, accord­ing to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Pol­icy Review Panel,

The con­ver­gence of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing mar­kets brings into ques­tion the con­tin­ued via­bil­ity of main­tain­ing two sep­a­rate pol­icy and reg­u­la­tory frame­works, one for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­mon car­ri­ers like the incum­bent tele­phone com­pa­nies and one for their com­peti­tors in most of the same mar­kets, the cable telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions companies.

To com­plete the scene, after a six month study on the impact of new media on tra­di­tional broad­cast­ing ordered by Cab­i­net, the CRTC has recently restated its1999 deci­sion that new media need not be reg­u­lated. The very same new media are evoked in diverse forums to jus­tify the posi­tions raised by broad­cast­ers, cable oper­a­tors and con­glom­er­ates to dereg­u­late the sys­tem put in place over the past cen­tury, with a patch­work of dis­con­nected deci­sions being taken.

What strikes the observer of all this is that piece by piece, events are tak­ing place in a seem­ingly dis­jointed and not always pub­lic process, a cause of con­cerns for many of the par­ties involved and for all Cana­di­ans who may remem­ber what hap­pened to our film indus­try when we let go of our dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem in the 1920’s.

Faced with this, the CCA has taken a num­ber of steps which will be detailed in a Bul­letin com­ing out next week. For now, let us talk about our pri­or­i­ties for the com­ing year

CCA’s pol­icy and advo­cacy pri­or­i­ties for 2007-08

At its Feb­ru­ary 2007 meet­ing, the Board of the CCA revis­ited the pol­icy and advo­cacy pri­or­i­ties for 2007-08.  It is quite clear that pri­or­i­ties have not changed much, not much hav­ing moved for­ward in the cur­rent unsta­ble polit­i­cal fed­eral environment.

The CCA 2007-08 Action Plan will be artic­u­lated around five broad pol­icy priorities:

• Increas­ing the lev­els of fed­eral gov­ern­ment invest­ment in the arts and cul­ture sector
• Advanc­ing the socio-economic sta­tus of artists, cre­ators and other arts professionals
• Enhanc­ing the sup­port for the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of Cana­dian cul­tural prod­ucts at home and around the world
• Affirm­ing the role of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in arts and cul­ture policy
• Devel­op­ing cul­tural diver­sity at home and abroad

A detailed descrip­tion of these pri­or­i­ties can be found on CCA’s @gora. Do not hes­i­tate to share your views on them with us either through email or though the blog.