The Speech From the Throne — 39th Parliament of Canada “Turning a New Leaf”

CCA Bul­letins 17/06

April 5, 2006

The Gov­er­nor Gen­eral of Canada, the Rt. Hon. Michaëlle Jean, deliv­ered the Speech from the Throne yes­ter­day to an assem­bly of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, Sen­a­tors, the Supreme Court Jus­tices, Chief of the Defense Staff, mil­i­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives and select invited guests.

The Speech from the Throne is an impor­tant indi­ca­tor of the gen­eral direc­tions that the Gov­ern­ment of Canada intends to take dur­ing its man­date. As expected, the Speech dealt with the more hard-edged polit­i­cal agenda of the new gov­ern­ment. The top five pri­or­i­ties that the Con­ser­v­a­tives included in their recent fed­eral elec­tion plat­form are obvi­ously the promi­nent fea­tures of the Speech and the agenda of the new gov­ern­ment. Inter­est­ingly enough how­ever, the top five were also joined by some new ele­ments, like address­ing the so-called fis­cal imbal­ance with the provinces, reform­ing the Sen­ate to improve its regional rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and others

As expected, there was no spe­cific men­tion of any of the cul­tural pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that the arts and cul­ture sec­tor brought for­ward dur­ing the recent fed­eral elec­tion cam­paign. No men­tion of increased and sta­ble fund­ing, no men­tion of a review of the CBC or the CRTC (some­thing which fig­ured in the Con­ser­v­a­tive party plat­form), noth­ing about the fate of Cana­dian tele­vi­sion fund­ing, noth­ing on the role played by our national cul­tural insti­tu­tions, no indi­ca­tion about own­er­ship and con­trol of tele­coms and broad­cast­ing under­tak­ings. This was a delib­er­ate attempt to keep a rel­a­tively sharp focus on the gov­ern­ment agenda, while accom­mo­dat­ing some of the hot but­ton issues for the Oppo­si­tion par­ties and, pos­si­bly, avoid­ing overly con­tro­ver­sial issues.

But hope springs eter­nal! The Throne Speech did include a most wel­come para­graph for the cul­tural sec­tor, in which Her Excel­lency said:

“I have met with peo­ple from our two great lin­guis­tic com­mu­ni­ties and I can attest that our lin­guis­tic dual­ity is a tremen­dous asset for the county. Sim­i­larly, Cana­dian artists from all dis­ci­plines have con­firmed to me just how impor­tant cre­ative expres­sion is to the health of a demo­c­ra­tic society.”

A few moments later, she fol­lowed her ear­lier state­ment with, “The dis­tance we have trav­eled is remark­able. A coun­try once per­ceived to be at the edge of the world is now at the lead­ing edge of sci­ence, busi­ness, the arts and sports.”

While there were no spe­cific men­tions of any leg­isla­tive mea­sures con­cern­ing arts and cul­ture, these com­ments are some­what encour­ag­ing in that they con­vey an aware­ness by the Gov­ern­ment of Canada that the arts pro­vides a source of pride and a vital dimen­sion of life in a dynamic, demo­c­ra­tic state. These state­ments may well offer us with the toe­hold the sec­tor needs in order to have our con­cerns heard con­cern­ing increased and sta­ble fund­ing and tax­a­tion issues, which have been iden­ti­fied by the CCA Board as our top short-term advo­cacy priorities.

The Speech also touched on the issue of rep­re­sent­ing Cana­dian cul­tural issues in the inter­na­tional arena, stat­ing its inten­tion to facil­i­tate provin­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion in the devel­op­ment of Cana­dian posi­tions that affect areas of provin­cial responsibility:

“The Gov­ern­ment rec­og­nizes the spe­cial cul­tural respon­si­bil­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment of Québec and will there­fore invite Québec to play a role in the United Nations Edu­ca­tional, Sci­en­tific and Cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion (UNESCO). By har­ness­ing the diver­sity of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise found within our fed­er­a­tion, we can present a strong, united and con­fi­dent voice to the world.”

Engag­ing the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is a seri­ous and com­plex mat­ter and com­mit­ting to involve the provinces directly and indi­rectly in the for­ma­tion of Cana­dian for­eign pol­icy may sound like a rea­son­able and pro­gres­sive way to do busi­ness. Fur­ther­more, this may appear to be a log­i­cal exten­sion to the inclu­sion of Que­bec and New Brunswick del­e­ga­tions at the Fran­coph­o­nie. It may how­ever some­times prove dif­fi­cult to do so and “present a strong, united and con­fi­dent voice to the world”.

While the Speech from the Throne is a good indi­ca­tor of the pri­or­i­ties of the Gov­ern­ment, the real mea­sure will be the next fed­eral bud­get. It is expected that we will learn of the day of the time­line for release of the fed­eral bud­get in the next few days.  As always, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts will keep its mem­bers, the pub­lic, and the media informed of any fur­ther news and devel­op­ments in the area of arts and cul­tural pol­icy that comes from our newly-minted fed­eral government.