CCA Bul­letin 20/07

Ottawa, May 11, 2007

Of grants and con­tri­bu­tion agree­ments

The Canada Coun­cil for the arts launches a con­sul­ta­tion

CCA Vice Pres­i­dent honoured

The Grants and con­tri­bu­tion agree­ments file

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) has, for some time now, been mak­ing the case for less oner­ous account­abil­ity require­ments that should be reflec­tive of the amounts of money in ques­tion.  The CCA was pleased to see that the Blue Rib­bon Panel (BRP) on Grants and Con­tri­bu­tions’ final report, released on Valentine’s Day this year, endorsed this posi­tion in its recommendations.

Notably, the Panel also rec­om­mended that multi-year fund­ing be stan­dard­ized and that grant and con­tri­bu­tion recip­i­ents be given more flex­i­bil­ity in the man­age­ment of funds within the over­all project bud­gets.  The CCA recently wrote to the Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage, the Hon. Bev Oda, in order to encour­age her to work with her col­leagues in Gov­ern­ment to bring about imme­di­ate changes in keep­ing with the rec­om­men­da­tions of the BRP report.

Grants and con­tri­bu­tions rep­re­sent an annual expen­di­ture of almost $27 bil­lion for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and the BRP rein­forced pre­vi­ous assess­ments as to the effi­ciency and eco­nom­i­cal advan­tages of this approach to deliver valu­able ser­vices to Cana­di­ans. The report pre­sented a wide range of con­sen­sus amongst the recip­i­ents of grants and con­tri­bu­tions who uni­formly com­plained of oner­ous account­abil­ity require­ments, delays in decision-making and/or the release of funds.  Inter­ven­ers also told the Panel that there should be uni­form stan­dards for pro­gram design, eval­u­a­tion, and admin­is­tra­tion across the fed­eral government’s net­work of depart­ments and agencies.

The Panel addressed these con­cerns with 32 clear, sen­si­ble rec­om­men­da­tions to elim­i­nate overly com­plex account­abil­ity mea­sures and to estab­lish pro­gram admin­is­tra­tion stan­dards as well as clear def­i­n­i­tions and terms for grants and con­tri­bu­tions through­out the fed­eral sys­tem.  Like many other Cana­dian umbrella orga­ni­za­tions, the CCA has heard con­sis­tently and con­stantly from its mem­bers about the increas­ing “account­abil­ity bur­den” in recent years, as well as the dif­fi­cul­ties for grant recip­i­ents to plan on future oper­a­tions in the absence of multi-year fund­ing, all coun­ter­pro­duc­tive prac­tices which actu­ally lead to a waste of efforts and of pub­lic funds, thence our call for imme­di­ate action: there is no time like the present for con­struc­tive action on this front!

The Canada Coun­cil for the Arts Seeks Input on Future Directions

The Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, which is cel­e­brat­ing its 50th anniver­sary this year, is ask­ing the arts com­mu­nity and the pub­lic to help guide the future direc­tions of the national arts fund­ing agency.

In devel­op­ing its Strate­gic Plan for 2008–2011, the Canada Coun­cil will be hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions over the next two months with a wide range of ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous com­po­nents of the arts com­mu­nity, as well as other provin­cial, ter­ri­to­r­ial and regional arts fun­ders and fed­eral depart­ments and agen­cies. The Coun­cil is also enabling other inter­ested indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide their input through its web site.

The Council’s strate­gic plan will be devel­oped over the sum­mer and early fall, and will be reviewed by the Board of the Canada Coun­cil dur­ing its 50th anniver­sary meet­ing in Mon­treal in Octo­ber 2007. Once approved by the Board, it will be released to the pub­lic and posted on the Council’s web site.

CCA Vice-President Honoured

In an April 12 cer­e­mony, Karl Siegler, owner of Talon­books, received the Gray Camp­bell Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Award 2007 for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the book indus­try in British Colum­bia.  Cur­rently Karl is vice-president of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) and chair­man of our pol­icy and advo­cacy committee.

As well as being a com­mit­ted and pas­sion­ate pub­lisher of award-winning lit­er­ary, schol­arly and ethno­graphic titles, Siegler has been instru­men­tal in shap­ing pub­lic pol­icy for lit­er­ary pub­lish­ing, writ­ing doc­u­ments which led to impor­tant pro­grams such as the BC Arts Council’s Block Fund­ing for Pub­lish­ers and the Library Book Pur­chase Plan. He is also a co-founder and past pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Book Pub­lish­ers of British Colum­bia, a found­ing mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Simon Fraser University’s Cana­dian Cen­tre for Stud­ies in Pub­lish­ing and the Mas­ter of Pub­lish­ing Pro­gram. He has been pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­dian Pub­lish­ers twice and co-founded the Lit­er­ary Press Group, serv­ing as its chair­man for sev­eral terms.

The CCA warmly con­grat­u­lates our col­league Karl on this well-deserved accom­plish­ment and are pleased that his cul­tural pol­icy lead­er­ship is being acknowl­edged by his appre­cia­tive peers.