Updates On Federal Reviews and Other News

CCA Bul­letin 47/06

Novem­ber 14, 2006

In Bul­letin 39/06, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) informed you about a series of reviews of pro­grams and poli­cies under­taken by “Canada’s new gov­ern­ment”. Some of these reviews have now been com­pleted and the reports are pub­lic. Other reviews have also been con­cluded and their out­comes are evi­dent in deci­sions that have been announced by gov­ern­ment officials.

1. The review of Part III of the Canada Labour Code, ini­tially sched­uled to be released last June, has finally been made pub­lic. The object of the review was to ensure that the pro­vi­sions of Part III (address­ing those work­ers in areas of fed­eral labour juris­dic­tion — com­mu­ni­ca­tions, trans­porta­tion, bank­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions) were ade­quate to address the sig­nif­i­cant changes in Canada’s labour force and econ­omy. Among the rec­om­men­da­tions of most inter­est to the arts and cul­ture sec­tor is the pro­posal for fed­eral fund­ing of life-long-learning and skills upgrad­ing, and the pro­vi­sion of some “soft” ben­e­fits to self-employed, inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors, and vul­ner­a­ble work­ers. This would be achieved through the cre­ation of a ben­e­fits bank that could be drawn upon to pro­vide pro­tec­tions to work­ers in areas of fed­eral labour juris­dic­tion. The exten­sive report can be found in its entirety on the Fed­eral Labour Stan­dards review website.

While on this topic, it is worth not­ing that on Novem­ber 8, Oppo­si­tion par­ties in the House of Com­mons passed the sec­ond read­ing of a Bloc Québé­cois pri­vate member’s Bill to amend the Employ­ment Insur­ance Act. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to artists is the fact that if passed, the amend­ments may give them access to employ­ment insur­ance: one of the pro­vi­sions of the Bill would indeed empower the gov­ern­ment to ” make such reg­u­la­tions as it deems nec­es­sary respect­ing the estab­lish­ment and oper­a­tion of a scheme of employ­ment insur­ance for self-employed per­sons or classes of self-employed per­sons”. The Bill is now head­ing for review by the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Human Resources and Social Development.

2. The CRTC has rejected Bell ExpressVu’s appli­ca­tion to re-distribute the sig­nals of sub­scrip­tion satel­lite radio ser­vices (SSRs), say­ing that those ser­vices are not pro­gram­ming under­tak­ings accord­ing to accepted def­i­n­i­tions of the term, but have been licensed as dis­tri­b­u­tion under­tak­ings and, as such, can­not be redis­trib­uted by other dis­tri­b­u­tion under­tak­ings. This will likely lead to sim­i­lar deci­sions in the case of Rogers Cable, Telus and Vidéotron, which have all applied for the same mod­i­fi­ca­tion to their con­di­tion of licence over the sum­mer. You will remem­ber that the CCA and many other orga­ni­za­tions within the cul­tural sec­tor had opposed those appli­ca­tions. In the inter­ven­tion pre­sented on August 31, which had been signed by 10 other orga­ni­za­tions, the CCA had requested that the CRTC hold a pub­lic hear­ing on this issue, to exam­ine the con­se­quences for Cana­dian con­tent reg­u­la­tions of hav­ing licensed SSRs. It now seems that this denial on a tech­ni­cal­ity will pre­vent hav­ing this open debate!

3. The Blue Rib­bon Panel on the Child Fit­ness Tax Credit had also asked to have a lit­tle more time to pub­lish their find­ings, say­ing they had been over­whelmed by over 1000. Barely three weeks later, the Panel released its final report on Octo­ber 26. The CCA had deliv­ered to the Panel and to the Min­is­ter of Finance a brief pro­mot­ing the inclu­sion of arts activ­i­ties as eli­gi­ble for the tax credit. The report devel­oped the cri­te­ria for eli­gi­ble activ­i­ties as those which increased cardio-vascular rates for par­tic­i­pants and the CCA is dis­ap­pointed with the fact that the panel stuck very nar­rowly to its man­date and did not make any men­tion, even as foot­notes, of the pro­posal and argu­ments put for­ward in our brief. The CCA has since sent a let­ter to the Finance Min­is­ter ask­ing him once again to con­sider our rec­om­men­da­tion, which has been pre­pared at his express request.

And while we are on the issue of tax cred­its and exemp­tions, here’s an inter­est­ing quote from the House of Commons:

“. The credit would not be just for phys­i­cal activ­ity. It would have to be activ­ity. If one is going to go down that route, one might as well go the whole way, and the whole way is one has to cover the artists, the musi­cians, the ath­letes, pretty well every­one. In which case, one might as well just raise the basic per­sonal exemp­tion and that way every­body ben­e­fits.” (John McKay, Lib. MP, Octo­ber 27, 2006)

4. As part of the review of the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage pro­grams, the Inter­na­tional Net­work for Cul­tural Diver­sity (INCD) has been refused fund­ing by the depart­ment. The news was a bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment to those who have worked inter­na­tion­ally through the work of the INCD. The future of INCD will be dis­cussed at a meet­ing next week in Brazil. Cana­dian Her­itage will how­ever con­tinue to pro­vide fund­ing for the Coali­tion on Cul­tural Diver­sity that works for the rat­i­fi­ca­tion by as many coun­tries as pos­si­ble of the UNESCO dec­la­ra­tion on cul­tural diver­sity around the world. The CCA will con­tinue to work with the Coali­tion on Cul­tural Diver­sity in the pro­mo­tion of their mis­sion. It is also impor­tant to note that the Cana­dian Com­mis­sion on UNESCO is active in this area and engages a wide range of civil soci­ety inter­ests in its work. What remains unclear with the government’s deci­sion to stop fund­ing the inter­na­tional sec­re­tariat of INCD is what will hap­pen with the involve­ment of civil soci­ety in the cul­tural diver­sity file: since 1999, INCD had been respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing the civil soci­ety meet­ings, held in par­al­lel with the annual meet­ing of cul­tural ministers.

5. The CCA is still watch­ing for the report of the Blue Rib­bon Panel on Grants and Con­tri­bu­tions, due for early Decem­ber, and the release of the Pre-Budget Report of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Finance. The Stand­ing Com­mit­tee bases its report in part on the rep­re­sen­ta­tions it has heard from a wide range of inter­ests within Cana­dian soci­ety, indus­try and eco­nomic specialists.